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This book opens crucial new perspectives on the vexed question of chronology in Flaubert's work. Critics have struggled long and hard with the apparent inconsistencies in his writing, but Claire Addison's study reveals that the situation is far more subtle, complex and intriguing than hitherto supposed. She argues that Flaubert's manipulation of dates is deliberate, and that what have previously been dismissed as inadvertent errors are in fact evidence of the strong presence of Flaubert's personal mythology in his work, creating links between his family life, events in historical Europe, and events in the life of his literary characters. This altogether original reading goes far beyond what traditional methods of literary history allow us to perceive of the link between the life and work of the author.
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FRENCH 4 8
WHERE FLAUBERT LIES
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FRENCH GENERAL EDITOR: Malcolm Bowie (All Souls College, Oxford) EDITORIAL BOARD: R. Howard Bloch (University of California, Berkeley), Terence Cave (St John's College, Oxford), Ross Chambers (University of Michigan), Antoine Compagnon (Columbia University), Peter France (University of Edinburgh), Christie McDonald (Harvard University), Toril Moi (Duke University), Naomi Schor (Harvard University), Michael Sheringham (University of London) Recent titles in this series include 44 JAMES H. REID Narration and Description in the French Realist Novel: The Temporality of Lying and Forgetting 45
EUGENE W. HOLLAND
Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The Sociopoetics ofModernism 46
HUGH M. DAVIDSON
Pascal and the Arts of the Mind 47
DAVIDJ. DENBY
Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1760-1820: A Politics of Tears 48
CLAIRE ADDISON
Where Flaubert Lies: Chronology, Mythology and History 49
JOHN GLAIBORNE ISBELL
The Birth of European Romanticism: StaeVs De L'Allemagne 50
MICHAEL SPRINKER
History and Ideology of Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu and the Third French Republic 51
DEE REYNOLDS
Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space 52
DAVID B. ALLISON, MARK S. ROBERTS and ALLEN S. WEISS
Sade and the Narrative of Transgression 53
SIMON GAUNT
Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature 54
JEFFREYMEHLMAN
Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France
A complete list of books in the series is given at the end of the volume.
WHERE FLAUBERT LIES Chronology, mythology and history
CLAIRE ADDISON University of Queensland
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521420167 © Cambridge University Press 1996 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1996 This digitally printed first paperback version 2006 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Addison, Claire. Where Flaubert lies: chronology, mythology and history / Claire Addison. p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in French: 48) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 42016 4 (hardback) 1. Flaubert, Gustave, 1821—1880 — Criticism and interpretation. 2. Time in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PQ2250.A33 1996 843'.8-dc20 95-32383 CIP ISBN-13 978-0-521-42016-7 hardback ISBN-10 0-521 -42016-4 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-03107-3 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-03107-9 paperback
With affection and gratitude, to Blanche Yvonne and Thomas Joseph Addison
Contents
Publisher's note Acknowledgements Abbreviations and conventions
page x xi xii
Introduction
i
1.
The Flaubert dates
n
2.
The colours of time in the first Education sentimentale
22
3.
Conception, birth, death in Madame Bovary
48
4.
Heads and tails in Salammbo
88
5.
Two-timing in UEducation sentimentale
130
6.
The Hundred Days oiBouvard et Pecuchet
187
7.
Petit dictionnaire de Flaubert Adolphe Schlesinger Alfred/Frederic Auguste/Gustave Bonaparte /Beauharnais Emma/Emilie Flaubert/Sophocle(s) Rose/Hortense
216 216 225 231 239 253 263 269
Conclusion
282
Diachronic and synchronic charts Bibliography Index
284 375 383 IX
Publisher's note
The author of this book died just after the manuscript was delivered for press, and a number of people have been instrumental in carrying out certain tasks which would ordinarily have been performed by the author herself. Particular gratitude is due to Professor P. M. Cryle and his colleagues at the Department of Romance Languages, University of Queensland, Dr Adrianne Tooke of Somerville College, Oxford, and Professor Malcolm Bowie of All Souls' College, Oxford, for their help in seeing the book through to publication.
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank Professor Peter Cryle and the Romance Languages Department of the University of Queensland for support including a research grant for the compilation of the index of this work, a task performed by Jason Aldworth of Union College. I should also like to thank Dr Harley Bradbury and the members of Union College, especially Anthony Murdoch and Gavin Putland, who have given a great deal of help with computer education. Professor Paul Crook of the History Department has also provided intellectual support over a long period.
XI
Abbreviations and conventions
For convenience of access, I have used the Seuil edition of Flaubert's Oeuvres completes in two volumes established and annotated by Bernard Masson. Textual references to these volumes follow the convention of Roman numerals for the volume and Arabic for the page numbers. The same convention has been followed for other multi-volume works such as Sartre's L'Idiot de lafamille (IF).
Since I have taken issue with the assertion that the first Education sentimentale was completed on 7 January 1845, and since
comparisons have been made between the two novels bearing that title, I have used ESi and ESn as a form of shorthand in reference to these. Similarly, the nouvelle version of Madame Bovary (MB) established by Pommier and Leleu has been rendered NV and the definitive version DV. Bouvard et Pecuchet, La Tentation de saint Antoine and La Legende de saint Julien VHospitalier appear as
BeP, TSA and SJH respectively. Corr has been used for the Conard edition of Flaubert's correspondence, C for the Bruneau edition. The sixteen-volume Club Franchise du Livre edition of Victor Hugo's Oeuvres completes, with its detailed chronology at the end of each volume, has been most useful. It is quoted by initials, volume number and page number, e.g. VH, vn, 1304. Fasti refers to Frazer's one-volume edition of Ovid's calendar; 'Frazer' to the one-volume edition of The Golden Bough. Where Trazer' appears followed by Roman numerals, the reference is to the four-volume edition of the Fasti, with commentary. Most other works have been referred to by author's name and page number only (with volume number where relevant), if xii
Abbreviations and conventions
xiii
only one work by that author appears in the Bibliography. E.g. £ Bopp, 56' means L. Bopp, Commentaire sur Madame Bovary, p. 56. If there is more than one work, each one is referred to by the author's name plus an abbreviated date, e.g. Dauzat63 is Dauzat, Les noms de lieu; Dauzat56 is Dauzat, Les noms de personnes. Some works, which are cited with particular frequency, appear in a more abbreviated form. A full list of these is given below. A79 Agulhon, Marianne au combat A83 Agulhon, 1848 ou Vapprentissage de la Republique AF A. Frewin, A Book ofDays AL A. Lognon, Les Noms de lieu de la France B-G Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages CI671 Clebert, Bestiairefabuleux Cle86 Clebert, Louise Colet ou la Muse Con65 Connelly, Napoleon's Satellite Kingdoms Con68 Connelly, The Gentle Bonaparte CY C. Yonge, History of Christian Names D33 Dumesnil, Guy de Maupassant D45 Dumesnil, Le Grand Amour de Flaubert D47 Dumesnil, Gustave Flaubert. UHomme et Voeuvre DD D. Duff, Eugenie and Napoleon III D&G Dunkling and Gosling, Dictionary of First Names D&R Dauzat and Rostaing, Dictionnaire etymologique des noms de lieu ECS E. C. Smith, American Surnames F&C Fay and Coleman, Sources and Structures of Flaubert's Salammbo G Ginzel, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie GB Georges Bachelard, La Poetique de Vespace G-G Gerard-Gailly, Le Grand Amour de Flaubert G-M Gothot-Mersch, 'Aspects de la temporalite dans les romans de Flaubert' J&T Jardin and Tudesq, La France des Notables JJB J. J. Bond, Handy-Book of Rules and Tables JR J. Richardson, Victor Hugo
xiv
Abbreviations and conventions
MW M. Warner, Alone ofAll Her Sex NY N. Young, The Growth ofNapoleon NW69 N. Williams, Chronology of the Expanding World NW75 N. Williams, Chronology of the Modern World OCD Oxford Classical Dictionary OED Oxford English Dictionary PY P. Young, Napoleon3s Marshals RBS R. B. Smith, Carthage and the Carthaginians RC Robert Chambers, A Book ofDays RLW R. L. Williams, The Horror of Life RMW R. M. Wikson, The Empress Josephine RP R. Pflaum, The Emperor's Talisman WCHS W. C. H. Smith, Napoleon III SZ S. Zweig, Joseph Fouche The use of the Derridean stroke (/) is meant to signal the area of play between the 'either-or' of binary oppositions and the 'both-and' of postmodernism. A list of the changeover dates from Julian to Gregorian calendars provided by Ginzel (111, 266-75) and Bond {HandyBook of Rules, p. 96) is given below in order to avoid the necessity of acknowledging the sources of such temporal coincidences on each occasion in the text. Calendar changes: Julian to Gregorian 10 / 20 December 1582 France and Lorraine 22 December / 1 January 1583 Netherlands 6 / 1 6 October 1583 Tyrol 15/25 December 1583 Karinthia and Styria 7 / 17 January 1584 Bohemia, Moravia, Lausatia 13 / 23 January 1584 Silesia 11 / 21 February 1583 Diocese of Liege 14 / 24 February 1583 Augsburg 5 / 1 5 October 1583 Trier 6 / 1 6 October 1583 the Bavarian dioceses 3 / 1 3 November 1583 Julich 4 / 1 4 November 1583 Archbishopric of Cologne (with Aix-la-Chapelle)
Abbreviations and conventions
xv
5 / 1 5 November 1583 Wiirzburg Mainz 1 2 / 2 2 November 1583 Strasburg, Baden 17/27 November 1583 25 September / 5 October 1583 Gorlitz Bautzen 2 / 12 January 1584 10 / 20 January 1584 Zittau 1 2 / 2 2 November 1583 Friedland / Reichenberg 4 / 14 / 8 / 18 January 1584 Breslau Dukedom of Westphalia 2 / 12 July 1584 Diocese of Paderborn 17 / 27 June 1585 22 October / 1 November 1587 Presburg 15 / 25 December 1590 Transylvania 23 August / 2 September 1610 Dukedom of Prussia 14 / 24 December i6i5/i6i7/i624Pfalz/Kurland/Osnabrlick 16 / 26 March 1631 Hildesheim 6 / 1 6 February 1682 Strasburg 12 / 22 January 1584 Catholic cantons Switzerland 1 / 12 January 1701 Further Swiss cantons Netherlands provinces 1 / 12 July 1700 1 / 12 December 1701 Friesland, Groningen 1 / 11 March 1583 (temporarily) Groningen (Bond, 96) 19 February / 1 March 1700 Denmark 3 / 1 4 September 1752 England Synchronic and diachronic charts for each of the novels studied are given in the appendices. The reader is referred to the synchronic charts for page references to the novels involved.
Introduction
«I1 aura peut-etre choisi le jour?» se disait tout bas Matho.(i, 746). Those, such as Bovet, Dumesnil, Descharmes, Fay and Coleman, Bopp and Gothot-Mersch, who have studied the question of time in Flaubert have been unanimous in their concern for the number of irregularities in the chronologies of Flaubert's works. The verdict seems unanimous that Flaubert was more concerned with the establishment of a seasonal atmosphere, relating to the time of writing or to the character's mood, than with the establishment of a consistent linear progression. The pathetic fallacy explains all. However, all who have studied the plans of Flaubert's works are also aware of a particularly cunning level of personal involvement on Flaubert's part in the treatment of contemporary or historical detail: it is the manipulation of the marginal which often impresses. De Biasi, in his study (in the edition) of the carnets de travail, observes: un clin d'oeil ludique a usage purement personnel, comme on en rencontre un peu partout dans les textes de cet ecrivain «impersonnel» qui s'amuse a disseminer dans ses recks des details (des «noms» en particulier) qui ne peuvent faire sens que pour lui-meme. Seul un examen approfondi des «sources» biographiques et des documents de genese permet d'en deceler la trace, occasionnelle (comme c'est le cas ici) ou plus profonde lorsqu'il s'agit de messages «cryptes» qui concernent des details plus personnels ou plus anciens. (De Biasi, 425). Anomalous details concerning names and dates are precisely what Flaubert's cryptic game is all about, and it is possible to
2
Where Flaubert lies
trace a process whereby he moves from writing texts which encode messages sent to the self to a greater concern for 'cueing' the reader (and what a reader those cues imply!) as to the workings of the system. Writing is an act of self-discovery, and the novelist did not mind admitting that, at the beginning of his career, he wrote purely for himself and not for the reader, as in the case of TSA, where he himself was Saint Antoine (Ci, 127).
Yet this is the same writer who placed an unmistakable cave canem at the entrance to his work on numerous occasions. His motto from Epictetus, 'Cache ta vie et abstiens-toi' (Ci, 89), does not, however, imply authorial absence; on the contrary, the artist is like God in His creation, everywhere present and nowhere visible. Madame Bovary, as novel and as eponymous heroine, is both the author's self, 'd'apres moi', and an entirely impersonal work. The two don't fit, so we must conclude that Flaubert was issuing a challenge to the reader. In Bouvard et Pecuchet, the narrator claims that his protagonists mix up events because they don't know the dates, and that, from not caring about dates, they move on to a disdain for facts (11, 240). When they try to educate Victor, they find that their pupil can't master the nomenclature of the kings of France because he doesn't know the dates (11, 292) - which, in any case, are unreliable and not always authentic because of mistakes in the interpretation of calendar systems (11, 240). The details then given of the difficulty of measuring time show a sophisticated awareness of the history of chronometry, and the carnets de travail show an even more detailed acknowledgement of temporal anomalies, as well as indicating that Flaubert had read LArt de verifier les dates, that accessible guide to the problem (de Biasi, 918-20). Anne Green's study of Salammbo shows that Flaubert had read his Plutarch as attentively as he had read Polybius, and the synchronic chart of events contemporary with those of the Inexpiable War (Green, 145-6) indicates that Flaubert was as concerned with historical context as with the dates from the Athenian calendar provided by Plutarch's Life ofFurius Camillus (ibid., 126-7). The responses to Sainte-Beuve and Froehner (11,
Introduction
3
75iff.) show Flaubert's concern to establish an awareness of historical 'fact' insofar as it could be gleaned from every form of reference to a wide variety of sources, including a visit to the sites of the events. This is not the concern of an art-for-art'ssake writer who eschews any relationship with 'reality', however textual that 'reality' may be. During his school days, Flaubert's strong interest in history (Starkie, igff.), fostered by Cheruel and Gourgaud-Dugazon, formed the basis for the many historical subjects in the juvenilia. What also emerges over the course of his career is an equally strong interest in time measurement in its wide variety of forms, as TSAi shows: 'L'arbre de l'Eden qui portait chaque annee douze fruits rouges comme du sang, c'est la femme' (1, 398). Woman's body as a menses-calendar is one of the earliest parallels to the moon as measurer, and Flaubert's correspondence features repeated references to calendrical phenomena: 'A la 2e h[eure] du jour, le 9e jour des calendes de juillet, mardi, jour de Mars (biere de).'
(Ci, 65).
For the equinox of 21 September 1841, Flaubert observes to Ernest Chevalier: 'Le temps n'est plus ou les cieux et la terre se mariaient dans un immense hymen' (Ci, 85). 24 June, la saintJean, is recognised as the longest day of the year when the sun turns as red as a carrot (Ci, 23), and as the 'epoque oii Ton tond les moutons' (Ci, 177). UArt de verifier les dates (1783) was Ginzel's source for the times at which the Gregorian calendar superseded the Julian, and also provided tables enabling the reader to establish the daydate correlation for a point in time and the dates on which the festivals relating to Easter occurred. As the carnets show, Flaubert also showed an interest in its information regarding the Indictions, the birth of Christ, the various versions of the nineteen-year lunisolar cycle and the correlation between the Athenian year and the Olympiads (de Biasi, 918-20). These are not the interests of a writer whose concern is merely to match
4
Where Flaubert lies
mood and atmosphere, with scant attention to anomalies in the chronological development of his narrative. Indications of the ways in which 'writing with time' can be used to encode cryptic messages are afforded by such gems as Gustave's informing Ernest Chevalier that their friend Alfred is to be married in a fortnight, when the date of Gustave's letter is 4 June 1846 (Ci, 269). Since Alfred Le Poittevin was married on 6 July 1846, the solution to the contradiction is afforded by the fact that 18 June is the thirty-first anniversary of Napoleon's final battle: their friend was about to meet his Waterloo. By far the most impressive of these cunning chronological contradictions occurs in BeP, when the simple device of referring to a Sunday 20 March which should be Sunday 20 June 1841 produces a
coincidence of 20 March and 20 June, so that the ten-day 'Journey to Chavignolles' time run becomes a condensed version of the Glorious Hundred Days of 20 March to 2g June 1815. In £"511, a similar encoding is achieved by skipping a day: as the notes show, Flaubert was aware that the fighting on the boulevards ended on 4 December I8JI, which leads GothotMersch to ask why Flaubert should choose 5 December 1851 for the death of Dussardier (G-M, 47) by the simple device of writing 'le surlendemain'. One of the answers is that such a displacement creates a five-day time run which places the 1-5 December 1851 period in parallel with the I-J May 1847 period of the Champ de Mars and its aftermath. Another is that 5 December 1844 is the date when the Blind Man whose body is a 'tete guillotinee' is introduced to MB on the anniversary of the beginning of Louis XVFs trial, and of Napoleon's desertion of the army which was limping home from Moscow. The system of five- and ten-day time runs, in which the penultimate and antepenultimate days respectively are occulted, is a sophisticated procedure which was developed over time. It is foreshadowed in the period of the elopement in ESi and begins to emerge in the period of Emma's death in MB. By Salammbo, the system is in place, but it is the chef d'oeuvre, ESn, which exploits the method to the full. Nowhere is the system more comfortably ensconced than in BeP, however, where the
Introduction
5
many resonances established by the temporal manipulations in the earlier works produce a form of raise en abyme of the Flaubertian literary enterprise. Salammbo is a crucial step in the development of the scheme. Through the fact that the Babylonians, whose calendar is the basis of the Canaanite one, used a six-month year concurrently with a twelve-month year (Bickerman, 65), Flaubert formed the habit of thinking in terms of a six-month displacement, which explains why the 'tete de veau' incident on 23 April 1848 in ESu bears so many resemblances to the 'nouveau' episode on 23 October 1827 m MB. However, the habit was older than Salammbo, as is illustrated by Flaubert's comment on his debut to Ernest Chevalier on 22 September 1856: cJe perds ma virginite d'homme inedit ... le premier octobre. Que la Fortune-Virile (celle qui dissimulait aux maris les defauts de leur femme) me soit favorable!' (CII, 634). Fortuna Virilis belongs to / April, under which date Ovid {Fasti, 199) gives an identical description of her functions. The reader who wants to understand the chronological system in Flaubert must pay attention to the slightest hints regarding the temporal situation, must learn to mistrust both the characters and the narrators (who are all equally subject to a vanity born of the desire to maintain cherished illusions), and must check the Flaubertian text against its 'pre-texts' in order to question the motivation of discrepancies. Underlying this procedure is a repeated Flaubertian assumption: that reading is the ultimate act of laziness and vanity unless the reader becomes as active a participant in the process of textual construction as the writer is. If, like Flaubert's protagonists, the reader is willing to suspend disbelief concerning flagrantly anomolous statements about time, then that reader is overlooking the signposts that point to danger in the reading of both life and texts. The sense of danger connected with the unfolding of time concerns the process of censorship, both personal and political. As the Petit Larousse informs us, the calendarium itself is a registre de
dettes, a balance sheet in both the metaphorical and the literal senses. Because Flaubert's protagonists pay scant attention to
6
Where Flaubert lies
that balance sheet with life, they are brought down by others whom they have offended, or who have sought to exploit them after recognising their victims as blind to minute discrepancies. The act of writing for publication is always a challenge to the powers-that-be, in both the political and the personal senses: self-revelation is as damaging to one's personal illusions as it can be to the political regime which is the inevitable subject of such a subversive activity as writing. Writing with time is a way of balancing the registre de dettes by settling scores and indulging in self-mockery. While a Napoleonic regime is an obviously oppressive setting for a novelist who has something to say with a vengeance, no political rule is as critical as today's writer is of yesterday's writing. The writer is a hero precisely because he stretches the bounds of the possible by the massive labour of a vocation which has the compulsion of Destiny. Like the imperial conqueror, he remakes the world in his own image and suffers for his efforts; like the hero, he is honoured after his death by devotees who make pilgrimages to his cultic sites, especially his tomb, and who honour the anniversaries of his birth and death. The telling of 'time lies' is far from difficult in the context of a chronometrical system which calls the months by the 'wrong' names (September is not the 'seventh' month), which calls a week 'huit jours' and a fortnight 'quinze jours' and which has conflicting definitions as to what its basic unit of measurement, a 'day', is. The calendarium is always an ally of such fortunate friends of time as Lheureux, who defrauds the gullible Bovary by the simple act of defining 'gbre' as September instead of November. In the NV of MB, Charles's thousand-franc loan made on / November is due for repayment the following / November (NV, 451). In the DVit is repayable, along with a year's interest, on / September (1, 646). Such inattention to temporal detail as is shown by Charles Bovary is repeated in the general sphere by all of us when we make use of any collective chronometrical term. Whether that term is a week, a month, six months, a year or several years, it is almost always understood as an approximation, as though time in larger slabs were something vague and ungraspable. The writer takes advantage
Introduction
7
of that mental habit of temporal fuzziness to create precise but imperceptible patterns, which add a cryptic commentary to his narrative through the anomalies of time measurement itself. Gustave Flaubert was one of the 'victims' of a temporal anomaly: the fact that, although in the modern era the conventional beginning-point of a twenty-four-hour period is midnight, the oldest definition of a 'day' is from sunrise to sunrise. He was born at 4 a.m. on 13 December 1821, as Naaman's reproduction (p. 18) of the handwritten birth certificate indicates. Yet the date of birth of an infant so weak that he was not expected to survive was registered as 12 December, partly to avoid the 'nefaste' associations of the number thirteen, but also because of a long-term practice of defining the time of birth by the sunrise-to-sunrise count. Sunrise in Rouen in December occurs at about 8 a.m. (Bovet, 6), so Gustave's official birthdate, acknowledged by him throughout his life but undermined in his fictions, is four hours out of date in either direction. If he had been born four hours earlier, then registered time would have coincided with experienced time. If he had been born four hours later, then the real date of birth would have been acknowledged in the recorded date of birth. This is not a minor point, for we may state, as a general rule, that whenever a period of four hours is enigmatically dropped from a Flaubertian narrative, that point in the narrative is, in some sense, the date of the writer's birth or conception. Flaubert continued to acknowledge 12 December in his 'non-fictional' writing throughout his life, because maintaining the fiction made him 'twyborn' - like all mythic heroes - and gave him a special temporal relationship with one mythic hero in particular. Dates and words are intimately interconnected: through the festivals celebrated in the many calendars which have influenced the ones in current use, through seasonal phenomena such as sunrises, lunar phases, variations in flora and fauna patterns, and through rebuses and motifs which have a personal significance in the writer's or the nation's historical imagination. The fact that many Flaubertian dates happen to be Napoleonic dates as well is a reflection of the inheritance passed from
8
Where Flaubert lies
one generation to another and from the anterior to the posterior in general. A heroic figure such as Napoleon Bonaparte changes the mental complexion of all who come after him while simultaneously reaffirming the links with all who have gone before. Alexander and Hannibal are more real because Napoleon's feats encourage comparison with them, and the writer, though always the enemy and rival of the conqueror, finds an appropriate basis for comparison in another son of the Sacred Soil of France who shares the writer's ability to remake the map and the calendar in his own image. Romanticism in the nineteenth century had produced a tendency to authorial self-dramatisation and a penchant for encoding the least favourable elements of one's contemporaries' biographies in literary texts. In such an atmosphere of self-indulgence, Flaubert expounded the doctrine of impersonality, but always to those who, like Louise Colet, ran the risk of jeopardising the quality of their literary output by sacrificing objectivity in the name of revenge and the exploitation of the fame of others. In fact, there is a repeated pattern of interrelationship between autobiography, history and myth in Flaubert's literary texts which shows that he was concerned to reflect the flaws in the glass which warp/shape any chronicler's attempts to 'see' the world. Each of us acts upon time and is acted upon by time, and the interweaving of Flaubert family history with Europe's history and myth is an acknowledgement of the power of the personal in any attempt at objective portrayal. Claudine Gothot-Mersch has, in one article alone, articulated the problems of chronometry in Flaubert's works. The thoroughness with which the temporal discrepancies are highlighted in this communication enables the most basic questions about Flaubert's method to be posed. What if those 'non-sequiturs' are consistent and have been followed up in the narration of Flaubert's texts? What are the effects of dropping a year or two here and there or giving impossible dates for events? The first effect is to highlight suppressions/repressions of time and of the events those periods imply. In ESu, the
Introduction
9
dropping of a year on two occasions has the effect of wiping out the period of Flaubert's crise de Pont-VEveque on / January 1844 and of the deaths of a father and a sister on 15 January and 22 March 1846 respectively. Giving an obviously impossible date or temporal index, such as the timing of Pecuchet's departure from Paris or the yesterday is equal to five months ago of Charles Bovary's return to Les Bertaux, is a way of challenging the reader to discover the system which enables the equivalences established by those anomalies to exist. The period between the 'incorrect' date and the 'correct' date then creates a time leap or loop, so that the narration can double back on itself in such a way as to strike twice at the same date, thereby superimposing one set of events on another — as happens on the occasion of the news of Felicite's visitor and of Emma's relapse in MB — in order to show the workings of the unconscious of a character and/or of the nation. One of the great ironies of time measurement is the coexistence of a single point in time with several different dates, a subject exploited in La Legende de saint Julien VHospitalier. The cult of anniversaries means that we see today's date as a locus for the repetition of past events occurring on the same date; but varying definitions of the beginning point of a cday', and the measurement of time according to different calendars, mean that a particular moment may be defined as occurring on the date before or after the one enshrined in the calendar, or indeed as ten to twelve days before or after in terms of the calendar of mythical figures and/or saints. Flaubert's correspondence contains a wealth of temporal lore, from a persistent conviction that all Tuesdays were 'nefaste' (Jacobs, 27618) to a familiarity with the Coptic religion, 'la plus ancienne secte chretienne' (Ci, 559), which enables the writer to encode the original locations of saints' days according to the Coptic and Greek calendars. The latter is the basis of such notations in the Notes de Voyage as 'jour de l'an de l'annee grecque' for 13 January 1851 (n, 622) and 'PEpiphanie des Grecs' for 17 January 1850 (n, 568).
io
Where Flaubert lies
In the course of these pages, we shall discover the compulsive repetition of certain motifs relating to the most personal aspects of both the writer's life and the lives which loomed large in his mind and imagination. The persistent tendency to focus on the period of the conception of Adolphe Schlesinger in the context of a chronology which goes haywire as we approach that date; the repeated staging of the fantasy of Napoleon Fs engendering of Napoleon III; and the staging of a real or fantasy elopement point to an awareness that the notion of discrete identity is a myth. The writer is a shared identity, an absorption of models and prototypes whose actions are re-staged in the lives of those acted on by the past. Yet desire is more powerful than action, interpretation than event, so the scenes staged on the dates of earlier events do not imply the occurrence of those events in the writer's life. If Flaubert manufactures a weight of evidence to suggest that he is the genitor of Adolphe Schlesinger and the heir of Napoleon Bonaparte, the inference to be drawn is that these are powerful truths of the imagination rather than brute facts. The game of cache-cache betokened by the motif of the cache-mire is a statement about the power of the cryptic as long as it remains undeciphered. As an apologia for the undeniably heretical fabric to follow, we offer a cachemire adorned with red coral to the reader's gaze: 'Je ne connais rien ... qui nous empeche ... de le croire' (i, 536).
CHAPTER I
The Flaubert dates
Sartre (/F, i, 7231) found something suspicious in the deaths of Gustave's three young male siblings, and so he ought to have, for one of them was a girl. While there is general agreement that Flaubert's parents were married on 10 February 1812, there is confusion about almost everything else. Naaman's 1962 publication of Gustave's birth certificate gives the date 13 December 1821 at 4 a.m., and the following list (p. 171) is provided: Achille 09.02.1813-12.01.1882 Caroline 08.02.1816-09.10.1817 Emile-Cleophas 08.02.1818-13.07.1819 Jules-Alfred 30.11.1819-29.06.1822 Gustave 12.12.1821 (^-08.05.1880 Caroline-Josephine 15.07.1824-23.03.1846 Also from the official records comes the date 21 February 1846 for the birth of Desiree-Caroline Hamard (ibid., 21). So far, the records are wrong on two points: the dates of Gustave's birth and Caroline-Josephine's death on 22 March 1846. What they reveal, however, has enormous implications for the Flaubert family's concept of meaning. The Achille, Caroline and Emile-Cleophas who were born on 9 February 1813, 8 February 1816 and 8 February 1818 respectively are monstrously begotten anniversary children, mere perpetuations of the coming together of Achille-Cleophas and Anne-Justine-Caroline on 10 February 1812, so the charge of experimental engendering which Sartre (IF, 1,212) finds directed against the father in connection with the ape-human coupling in Quidquid volueris (1837) is most certainly justified. The second of the three anniversary children has a name 11
12
Where Flaubert lies
indicative of the sense of insufficiently endowed identity that we discern in a Charbovari who is the son of Charles-DenisBartholome Bovary (i, 576). From the plenitude of their multiple Christian names, the parents can find only the definitive one to bestow on each of their first two offspring. The name applied to the child who lived for twenty months from 8 February 1816 to g October i8iy was 'recycled' and used for the sixth child, who was a mere 'addition' to the system, as the name CarolineJosephine (CY, 23) implies. The life span of the only child who was ever Caroline Flaubert pure and simple is rendered through the twenty-month gap between the last two chapters in ES11, and in TSAi and T&4n through Apollonius' encounter with the tigress with eight young in her womb (1, 404, 486). The project of self-perpetuation discernible in the naming and dating systems of the Flauberts has yet more far-reaching implications. Caroline Flaubert died and was replaced by a Caroline-Josephine whose additional name means addition. Emile-Cleophas died, and Caroline-Josephine married Emile Hamard; but the name she called from the delirium of puerperal fever was Ernest Chevalier (Starkie, 140), the childhood friend of Gustave and Caroline who acted out plays with them on the billiard table at the Hotel-Dieu. The fatality of EmileCleophas's initials is indicated by the initials traced in sugared almonds at the wedding of Emma and Charles (1, 583-4) in MB. When Flaubert's niece Desiree-Caroline married on 6 April 1864, eight years to the day before the death of her grandmother and foster-mother, Anne-Justine-Caroline (1, 14-15), family approval had been granted to another EC: Ernest Commanville. Achille Flaubert fell in with the system: Jules-Alfred died, and Achille married a Julie and fathered a Juliette (Naaman, 20). Achille's departure for his Italian honeymoon of 20 June to 25 October i8jg coincides with Pecuchet's departure for Chavignolles on 20 June 1841. His return coincides exactly with the party given by the newly married receveur, Monsieur A, on 25 October i8jg in ESi (1, 281). The fatality of the family naming system extends even to Gustave: his Muse's full name was Cflro/eW-Augustine-Elisa (D45, 66).
The Flaubert dates
13
Naaman's reproduction of the handwritten certificate leave no doubt as to Gustave's birth on 13 December 1821, a date supported by the baptism of 13 January 1822 (Ci, 922). An existence so precarious that it could not be associated with the 'unlucky' number had proven itself viable by the time of baptism. The child born twelve days before Christ was baptised seven days after Christ (Voragine, 46, 84), but Gustave always acknowledged the 12 December birthdate when he wrote in literal terms (11, 564, 650). That he knew the real date is indicated in his fictions: in Un Coeur simple, Virginie Aubain's death is indicated by the gap of six months minus four days from Victor Leroux's departure on 16 June/July i8ig, the coincidence here occasioned by the fact that there was no Monday 14 July i8ig but only Monday 14 June i8ig, which defines the receipt of Virginie's last letter as 12 December i8ig112 January 1820 (11, 171). Since this date brings together Virginie's illness, her silence and the convent, the arrival of M. Poupart's cabriolet the following winter would occur on 12 December 1821/12 January 1822 and Virginie's death on 13 December 1821113 January 1822 (11, 172).
This produces a funeral date of / j December 1821/15 January 1822 (n, 173), the latter date providing a twenty-four-year prolepsis of Achille-Cleophas's death on / j January 1846 (1, 12). Moreover, the gap between the news of Victor's departure on 14 June/July i8ig and his actual departure on the date of the Hegira (AF, 221), 16 June/July i8ig (11, 171), contains the birthday of Caroline-Josephine Flaubert, 15 July 1824, while the eve of Felicite's 'unforgettable' date is 13 July i8ig, the day EmileCleophas died. In Salammbo, 12-13 December/June is the night of the strangled
interpreters and 13 December sees the arrest of Giscon with which the Inexpiable War begins. Three years later, Matho is captured on 12 June/December, and the last Barbarian dies in the Defile de la Hache twenty-four hours later on 13 June/December 238 BC. From beginning to end, Salammbo may be read as a set of variations on a 12/13 date, as indeed can SJH, and on those dates ten to twelve days later which correspond to calendar changes. ESn dramatises 12/13 repeatedly: Saturday 12 August 1843 becomes Saturday 14 September 1844 after Hussonnet walks
14
Where Flaubert lies
on his hands, and a coach trip planned for 13 August 1843 is postponed subsequently by twenty-four hours until 16 September 1844 a s a r^sult of Hussonnet's news (11, 40). Frederic inherits on 12 December 1845, but must postpone his departure for Paris by twenty-four hours, for the night coach of 13 December 1845 is full. When he does take the following night's coach, it is 14 December 1846, which is why Louise Roque has grown taller (n, 44). Postponed, missed or erratic coach trips are associated with conception, birth and death in Flaubert, as the post-menopausal Mme Bordin acknowledges when she tells Bouvard that he has missed the coach (n, 293). The model for the crazy cabriolets, calashes, coaches and so on in Flaubert is the Emperor Napoleon's famous green coach, a lumbering vehicle which seated two and contained a shakedown bed. This mobile headquarters/travelling hotel became the subject of a demoniac legend, 'a symbol of Napoleon's personality and destiny' (Delderfield, 85-6). The ghostly imperial vehicle unites the blue tilbury, the yellow Hirondelle and a certain fiacre of Rouen. In a letter to Alfred Le Poittevin of 16 September 1845, Flaubert defined the Muse as the best warhorse, the best coach to carry one through life in noble style (Ci, 251): so the coach is also a symbol of a vocation which has the compulsion of Destiny. St Julien's apotheosis occurs on the night of 12-13 February, the date of his Jete (AF, 59). Since legendary saints are usually syncretisms for the seasonal phenomena they replace in folklore, Julien's conception can be attributed to the date of his apotheosis, on the model of Christ (Voragine, 125). This affords a birthdate of 12 November for Julien, so the prophecy of his sanctity occurs on 14 November (11, 178), the date of AchilleCleophas's birth. Julien's August murder of his parents, then, would occur on the night of 12—13 August, for August is six months before/after February (11, 183). Since the parricide occurs just after sunrise, the date is 13 August. Finally, in BeP, the mantle of apostolic succession is passed to the 'Abbe Pruneau', who symbolises the next generation of literary heroes for France. The inheritance of the disciple is announced by the 'miracle' involving twelve pruneaux which become thirteen
The Flaubert dates
15
(11, 285). Flaubert's testament passes his own birthday on to 'Joseph Prunier5. Why persevere, then, with 12 December? First, because it gives the hero of one's autobiography a double birth: Flaubert did the same thing for Alfred Le Poittevin when he defined his death as having occurred at the stroke of midnight on 3-4 April 1848. Other forms of double dating such as that of the Saturday in 1843/1844 in ESn create suppressed, omitted or redundant dates which invite recuperation through events which cannot be dated in any other way: the coach trip planned for Sunday 13 August 1843 but postponed for twenty-four hours until Monday 16 September 1844 creates a possibility of dating the Sunday visit 'chez la Turque', because Sunday 13 August occurred in 1837 and in 1843.
However, that is only part of the story of 12 December. Gustave's grandfather Nicolas Flaubert was born on Assumption Day, / j August 1754 (G-G, 204). He shares a birthday with one who was born in 1769, became a father on 20 March 1811, deserted his comrades on 5 December 1812 and died on 5 May 1821 (AF, 252, 370, 146). If Napoleon Bonaparte died on the fifth day of the fifth month and Gustave Flaubert was born on the twelfth day of the twelfth month in the same year, 1821, then there is a word for the spatial equivalent of their temporal relationship: quinconce/ quincunx, etymologically a jive-twelve. But the quincunx also applies, through the reordering of the same digits, to the 5.12.1812 of Bonaparte's desertion of the army in Russia (NW75, 116), his least glorious day. And this particular quincunx introduces the Blind Man to Madame Bovary and stops the action of ESn, producing a flight in time and space which cannot dispel the shock waves of the marriage/murder on the historically impossible 5 December 1851. The birth of Desiree-Caroline Hamard and the death of Eugene-Josephine-Caroline Flaubert Hamard have been the subject of confusion for a long time, and Flaubert is the cause of that confusion. The records say that Desiree-Caroline was born on 21 February 1846, yet biographers who have made profound studies of the correspondence, including Bruneau, have always
16
Where Flaubert lies
insisted on a 21 January 184.6 birthdate (Q, 971) for Gustave's niece because of references in Gustave's undated letters. If the niece was indeed born on 21 January, six days after the death of Achille-Cleophas Flaubert (Ci, 976), but registered as 21 February, the result is that she, like her uncle, is twyborn. A single stroke of the pen achieved this feat, and that extra stroke helped to disguise the most amazing coincidence of all: DesireeCaroline was born on 21 January 1846 and Marie-Adele Schlesinger was born on 21 January 1836 according to the altered information she provided for her marriage certificate, as opposed to the date, ig April 1836, stated on her birth certificate (Q, 894). Less mysterious is the double birthday of MauriceAdolphe Schlesinger, who, although born on 3 October 1797, always gave the date 30 October iyg8 as his date of birth (G-G, 38l) in an unsuccessful effort at self-rejuvenation. In the Chronologie provided at the beginning of Bruneau's edition of the Correspondance (Ci, xxxvi), 20 March 1846 is given as the date of Flaubert's sister's death. Yet, throughout the notes to the correspondence, the date quoted on the death certificate, 22 March 1846 at 3 p.m. (Ci, 974), is given. The 20 March date for the death was accepted for many years. The year 1836, a decade before the worst year of Flaubert's life, saw the encounter with Maurice Schlesinger and Elisa at Trouville. Based on the information contained in the first Education sentimentale and on the date 13 August 1837 as the time of
Bouvard's first encounter with Pecuchet and as the moment of the visit 'chez la Turque' in ESu, it would seem that Gustave met Maurice on 6 August 1836 and Elisa a week later on 13 August 1836, especially since the story of the encounter with the desired woman in Flaubert always begins with an encounter with the man who appropriates her. However, the practice of basing guesses about an author's biography on elements in his/ her fictions is quite justifiably regarded as a specious one, for the very good reason that the dates of particular events may not have been remembered, since the relevance of those events may be appreciated only later. It would seem to have been Flaubert's habit, nonetheless, to assign a date based on a similar event from history or literature to a beginning point in his own
The Flaubert dates
17
life that was unappreciated as such at the time. This is the message the narrator emphasises in Me'moires d'unfow. that it was only later that he realised that he loved the woman whose shawl he had saved. This is not an unimportant point, as the dates of the events in Flaubert's novels are as often derived from cultural as from autobiographical sources. ESu begins with the choice between an adulterous love for an Elisa figure and a homosexual relationship symbolised by the sharing of Frederic's cloak with Deslauriers. Later temporal manipulations involving the equivalence of 12 August and 14 September will make 13 August coincide with 75 September, so
that the date of the first meeting with Elisa, 13 August, coincides with the date, 75 September, on which Lucien Chardon prostituted himself to Vautrin/Herrera for 15,000 francs in Illusions perdues (Balzac, Comedie humaine v', 651, 689).
There is no doubting the parallel between the sharing of the cloak in ESu and Vautrin's carrying off of Lucien in Illusions perdues, since Flaubert wrote 'Vautrin et Lucien de Rubempre' diagonally across from the point on the manuscript where Deslauriers was urging Frederic to take Rastignac as his model (Sagnes, 54). Deslauriers's attempt to corrupt Frederic occurs exactly eighteen years after Vautrin's successful attempt on Lucien on 75 September 1822.
Elisa Foucault and Louise Colet were apparently born eight days apart, on 23 September 1810 and 75 September 1810 respectively (Ci, 894, 979), though there is a discrepancy between the date of birth on Louise's birth certificate, 75 August 1810, and the 75 September date which appears in the formal records. The 75 August birthdate appears on Louise's marriage certificate as well, so Louise also was twyborn (Jackson 5, 360). September was an important month for most of the women in Gustave's life: his mother, Anne-Justine-Caroline Fleuriot, was born on 7 September ijg3, eight days before the death of her own mother, Charlotte Cambremer de Croixmare, on 75 September ijg3 (Ci, 837). Elisa married Jacques-Emile/Emile-Jacques Judee, who seems to have been known as 'Emile', at 11.30 p.m. on the night of 23 November i82g (G-G, 48). According to family traditions
18
Where Flaubert lies
quoted by Douchin and in more detail by Lottman, Elisa's wedding night consisted of an initiatory pack rape by her husband's military comrades during the wedding banquet. There are problems with this story, not the least of which is that the family seems to have associated the child whose birth resulted from this violation with the Marie-Adele acknowledged by Schlesinger as his own in the famous birth certificate mentioning a 'mere non denommee' (Lottman, 57-8). MarieAdele, the child Flaubert saw on the beach at Trouville when she was three or four months old, was certainly born in 1836, whatever the date. However, the rose bouquet scene in ££11 indicates that there may have been some substance to the story of the rape of 24 November i82g.
Judee was born on 14 March ijg6 (G-G, 48) and died as a result of an illness contracted in Africa on / November i8jg (Naaman, J26). Elisa's flight to Paris, to the home of her sister, on her wedding night was followed by Judee's military posting to Africa. By the time of his return on sick leave in the early days of October 1835, Elisa was pregnant with Marie-Adele, and it was only Judee's death in November 1839 that enabled Maurice to marry the 'mere non denommee' of his daughter, after the law's delay of 300 days had passed, on 5 September 1840 (G-G, 78). Adolphe-Maurice Schlesinger was born on 1 January 1842 (Ci, 894), which suggests a notional conception date of / April 1841, All Fools' Day. Gustave Flaubert's depucelage is pinpointed by Douchin through the letter to Ernest Chevalier of Sunday morning 24 February i8jg (Ci, 37; Douchin, 57). In it, Flaubert says he has visited the 'Institut de la rue du Platre', and Douchin defines this as the brothel where Flaubert's virginity was lost. This would seem to indicate the night of Saturday 23 February i8jg, exactly nine years before Frederic Moreau's depucelage on 23 February 1848, as that of Gustave's sexual initiation. The encounter with Eulalie Foucaud in the Hotel de la Darse in Marseille was another sexual initiation in Flaubert's terms, and a Saturday in October 1840 is indicated, which makes Douchin opt for iy October 1840 and Lottman for the end of October (Douchin, 59; Lottman, 74). If Frederic's initiation is
The Flaubert dates
19
an indication of Flaubert's cryptic methods in such cases, Saturday 24 October 1840 may be a more likely date for this event — if it ever occurred. The beginnings of the relationship with Louise Colet are the subject of further confusion because of mistakes over dates in the accounts of Louise and Flaubert. Bruneau is inclined to place the first meeting in Pradier's studio at 24 July 1846 and the first sexual encounter during the night of 2g~jo July 1846 (Ci, 1025,
1029).
Flaubert's syphilis is an ongoing cause for concern because of the repeated appearances of the motif in his works. Syphilis is itself a kind of calendar, both through the reliability of timing of its various stages and through controversy as to its origin. Was it a by-product of Columbus' voyages or was it in Europe before 1492? Flaubert seems to entertain the various theories in his fictions: in Loys XI, the King's brother has the black teeth and stumbling gait of mercury treatment (1, 139); in TSA, the fauns who follow Pan have 'boutons roses' on their foreheads (1, 517), as do Arnoux (11, 151) and Pecuchet (11, 269); in BeP, Gorju's return from a military tour in Africa introduces the disease to Chavignolles in a way that pays homage to Pliny's c Ex Africa semper aliquid novi'. Flaubert's own syphilis seems to have been contracted on 24 March 1850 from a fourteen-year-old yellow-skinned rat's named Mohammed. Earlier, on 31 December 1849, Flaubert's travel notes describe his behaviour in the presence of Mohammed, whom he also referred to as 'Narcisse', as having scandalised Delatour (11, 567). The account of the events on the Nile on 24 March 1850 is brief but symbolic: Mohammed saved Gustave's couverture from the water (11, 580). This is the signal for a disguised sexual relationship in Flaubert's fictions, whether supposedly non-fictional or not (Douchin, 30). The two visits to the Kars el-Aim hospital ward for syphilis cases are narrated in entirely different ways. The first, on 22 December 1849, *s humorously horrific in its graphic detail, but the horror relates to the others, to the poor souls, probably soldiers, who show their chancre-infested anuses to the travellers at a word of command from the doctor (n, 565). The visit of
20
Where Flaubert lies
i July 1850 (11, 601) is merely remarked in passing, along with signs of a mood of 'navrement', of 'tristesse'. While this visit may have been occasioned by Maxime Du Camp's having been infected earlier than Gustave, the possibility that Gustave was infected through a pederastic encounter on 24 March I8JO remains — though that possibility must be entertained with suspicion, since Flaubert's irony makes the historicity of any event narrated repeatedly in his fictions open to question. Flaubert's syphilis may have been experienced as the ultimate punishment for an unspeakable crime. It may equally well have resulted from the most stereotyped of encounters: that of the Sheik, that travelling Frenchman who demands that everything he meets or sees on his travels be Tohetique', with Kuckiuk Hanem or one of the many female prostitutes in Egypt at the time. What does seem to lend credence to this encounter on Palm Sunday 1850 is the fact that Emma Bovary dies on 24 March 1846 after swallowing the male poison, arsenic (arren 'male' in Greek), or the fact that Dulaurier is the doctor who treats Mendes's venereal infection diagnosed on / July 1840 in ESi. Palm Sunday, le dimanche des Rameaux, is also known as 'le jour du Laurier' (Montreynaud, 204). / July is six months before/after / January, so the diagnosis of syphilis becomes associated with the birth of Adolphe Schlesinger, in much the same way as the / April conception date of Adolphe becomes the date on which Pecuchet is infected with syphilis on the occasion of his depucelage (11, 261). This is not surprising in view of the private language of Flaubert and his friends, who associated marriage and its consummation with becoming poxy, 'verole' (Ci, 46). The assumption that novelists such as Flaubert use a complicated language based on temporal recurrence to encode additional messages/narratives in their fictions is somewhat dependent on the question of access to dates in the lives of their contemporaries. Novembre shows the profound, detailed level of self-revelation which an intimate relationship, no matter how temporary, produces; and anniversaries are an important aspect of each individual's autobiography. Moreover, Flaubert's
The Flaubert dates
21
library contained a complete edition of Michaud's Biographie universelle in 85 volumes (de Biasi, 954). Further, one may suppose that the novelist most famous for his background research, which de Biasi's study of the carnets has shown included the dating of events throughout, would not have neglected the etat civil as a source of comparison between commonly accepted autobiographies and official versions of the same. Here, Balzac can be of some use in illustrating the nineteenth-century novelist's method. In UInterdiction, the narrator claims that a lover would never seek to know his mistress's recorded age: cL'amour ne va jamais consulter les registres de l'etat civil' (Comedie humaine, 111, 422). Yet, thirty pages later, with reference to the same lady, Mme d'Espard: 'La marquise avait trente-trois ans sur les registres de l'etat civil, et vingt-deux ans le soir dans un salon' (111, 451). Evidently, the novelist and the lover part company when it comes to the question of Time's role in the plotting of narrative, and VInterdiction frequently articulates the novelist's concern with temporal continuity as a structuring element of the narrative (in, 446, 451, 460). In the end, the reader is left with the choice between believing that a novelist as careful as Flaubert could make inane statements about temporal continuity and suspecting that there is a system which makes those anomalies make sense.
CHAPTER 2
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimental
'La belette a queue noire s'appelle hermine ou roselet; hermine lorsqu'elle est blanche, roselet lorsqu'elle est rousse ou jaunatre ... Les hermines sont... rousses en ete et blanches en hiver' Buffon: L'Hermine
The first Education sentimentale begins and ends with temporal anomalies: the 'date of completion' affixed to the end is impossible both in terms of what is known of the historical circumstances of composition and in terms of the internal chronology of the story. In addition, many of the clues and constraints through which a chronology of the first half of the novel can be constructed are presented in a delayed position in the text, long after the events to which they refer, so that the prospective/retrospective aspect of the reader's activity is always to the fore. Bruneau (Ci, 988) claims that additions were made to ESi between August 1846 and Louise Colet's reading of it shortly before her 'Memento du 15 Janvier 1852' (Cn, 883). The ages of Jules and Henry towards the end give 1848, and Flaubert was in the habit of bringing novels to a present-tense perspective, as the endings of Novembre, MB and ESn show. It is most probable, therefore, that ESi was completed towards the end of 1851 and after Flaubert began work on MB, a point signalled through the copy of Notre-Dame de Paris inscribed with the name 'Emilie' in ESi (I, 340). Why, then, does the date 'Nuit du 7 Janvier 1845, u n e n e u r e du matin' (1, 373) appear after the theatrical ending of ESi as the final message of this polymorphous text? It is because the 22
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimentale'
23
Gregorian reform of 7/77 January 1584 constitutes a precedent for the temporal strategies of Flaubert's text. The date which was 7 January 1845 is a simple rearrangement of the digits of 7 January 1384, so an hour after midnight is 8/18 January 1845/ 1584. Through the transition from Julian to Gregorian calendars, the ten to twelve dates which were dropped from recorded time between 1582 and Flaubert's lifetime become the basis of a series of coincidences, equivalences and time loops which challenge the concept before/after on which chronometry is based. The positioning of the false date of composition/completion also repays attention: the clue to Flaubert's choice of dates as beginning points for the various scenes of the novel comes at the very end of the action, as a kind of postscript. This does not surprise in view of the delayed relaying of the clues and constraints necessary to situate any single event temporally. Without the information concerning the timing of the elopement conveyed over half-way through ESi (1, 328-36), it would be impossible to determine the beginning and end points of its chronology. The word 'mars' (1, 328), the mention of a twelfth and fifteenth of the month as the eve of the flight from Paris and the departure from Le Havre respectively (1, 331), then Morel's mention of a Saturday night as the moment of departure from Paris (1, 336), enable the reader to establish the date of the flight from Paris by the night coach as occurring on Saturday 13 March 1841 and the departure of the Aimable-Constance as Monday 15 March 1841.
From this, it is possible to determine the 'octobre' of the novel's opening as being October i8$g, and the clue afforded by the false date at the end of the text indicates that this October date will be a multiple one, just as the 12/15 of the elopement will provide the clue to the alternation of dates in the first few chapters. The very first introduction of the Gregorian reform on 5/75 October 1582 is the basis for the choice of the novel's opening date, and this coincidence, together with that afforded by the calendar change of 25 September/5 October 1583, situates the novel's opening at a 5/75 October 1839 which is also 25 September i
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Where Flaubert lies
Without these coincidences, it would be impossible to explain the contradictions arising from the use of the phrase 'huit jours' in the novel's opening pages. The eighteen-year-old Henry Gosselin and his mother arrive in the capital of the civilised world in October; a week later, Mme Gosselin announces her intention to return home, and does so shortly afterwards. During the first days after that emotional wrench masked by a young man's feigned cynicism, Henry wanders the boulevards staring at the catins, and narrowly escapes having his finger bitten off by the perruche rouge he admired more than the other caged birds on the Quai du Louvre. By the time Henry reads Jules's first letter while lying in his bed in the Pension Renaud that is, at a moment after his move from the hotel chosen by his mother to the boarding-house chosen by his grandparents Henry is still a 'debarque de huit jours' (i, 281). In other words, at the moment Henry reads Jules's complaint: 'tout est parti avec toi' (1, 280), Henry is simultaneously lying in his bed in the Pension Renaud and still in the hotel accommodation shared with his mother at the moment she announces her intended departure, and the dates of those impossible coincidences are 2/12/22 October i8jg, a week after Henry's arrival in Paris. Hence, the 75 October arrival is followed by a 12/22 October point at which several successive events coincide, and this pattern anticipates the 12/15 citation of the elopement. This is not the end of the story, however, as the calendar change of 22 October/1 November 1587 adds a further dimension to the contradictory moment when Henry is in three places at once, since he is also having his finger bitten by the red parrot on the Quai du Louvre on this same date. The temporal loop occasioned by these chronometrical coincidences enables certain events which succeed one another to occur on the same date, and to be associated with other events deriving from History and from the author's autobiography. Henry's arrival in Paris at a point of temporal rupture that is both a disjunction and a conjunction is emblematic of the hero's relationship to the different types of temporality in ESi. Mme Gosselin's announcement of impending departure, on a
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimentaW
25
date which will later coincide with Henry's encounter with the parrot, associates the mother's absence with the danger of frequenting prostitutes. Henry's act of choosing the prettiest of the caged birds as the object of his attentions suggests, in the context of his fascinated wanderings among the boulevard prostitutes, that this red parrot/parakeet is also, by a wordplay, a red wig and a red dog or fox situated on the quai named Louvrellupanar for the She-Wolf. 22 October i8jg, date of the dangerous encounter with the psittacus aurora, is also the moment when the Aurora Borealis was visible in Paris (VH, vi, Other messages conveyed through calendrical coincidence include the relationship between the novel and autobiography. Mme Gosselin's departure on 5/15/25 October/4 November i8jg predates Gustave's agonising parting from his mother on what he described as the worst day of his life, 25 October 18^ (11, 551) by exactly ten years. Gustave's departure from Nogent for Paris, and subsequently the Orient, becomes the Mother's leaving of her son. This same 25 October i8jg/i84g arises again in Jules's first letter, when the party to be given by the newly married local receveur designated only by the initial A on c le 25' (1, 281) coincides exactly with the return of Achille Flaubert from his Italian honeymoon on 25 October i8jg (Naaman, 20). More surprising than the contradictions of what is narrated is what is not narrated in the opening pages of ESi: Henry's arrival at the Pension Renaud and his first glimpse of Emilie, mentioned by him on two later occasions (1, 295, 329), is an important transitional event such as would usually be conveyed first-hand to the reader of the nineteenth-century novel. By the law of the alternation of 12 and 15 in the novel's first five chapters, this arrival should occur on the 2/12/22 October, which also equals / November i8jg, so that Henry meets Emilie on the exact date of Emile Judee's death (Naaman, 726), a date which is also 12 October, la saint-Renaud (Nicolas, 159). Emilie Renaud thus becomes associated with the dangerous red parrot, and the elements of her name deriving from the medieval bestiaries indicate that Emilie is Dame Hermeline
26
Where Flaubert lies
the weasel/ermine, wife of Maitre Renart/Renaud the fox (Cle 71, 328). The timing of Jules's first letter raises the question of the temporal distance between Paris and the unnamed home town which boasts a Place d'Armes, a Cafe Fran^ais and a Lion d'Or, as does Yonville-PAbbaye in MB. Here again, it is not until the elopement that the necessary information is given. Since Morel writes that the Saturday departure was two days previously, he is writing on Monday. The Gosselins receive the letter on Tuesday, and leave immediately for Paris (1, 336). From Henry's return after the Easter holidays in 1840, we know that the night coach arrives in Paris the next morning, but probably before first light, since Henry counts the street lights on his way from the coach terminal to the Pension Renaud (1, 311). It follows that both passengers and mail arrive in Paris the day after despatch. Emilie's first visit to Henry's room on the afternoon of the first Renaud soiree presents a chronological problem. The narrator thinks that the month is January, though the same evening is defined as December (1, 283, 285). Further clues are the coming of nightfall at four p.m. (i, 285); the much later statement that the Renauds hold their get-togethers on the first and the fifteenth of each month (1, 322); and the indication that Emilie tends to visit Henry on Sundays, at least in the early days of their relationship (1, 292). The eighteen-year-old Henry who made his October entry into Paris at the beginning of ESi is still eighteen on the evening of the Renaud dinner party (1, 278, 285), and the imprint of Emilie's body on his bed made that very January afternoon is still there on the December night after the dinner (1, 284, 287). The whole host of calendar changes between 1 December and 22 January at different periods enables an equivalence of 1/12/22 December With 1/2/12/22 January to be established, and the 12/13 coincidence associated with Gustave's birth is the basis for a further relationship whereby 2/13/23 December becomes 2/13/23 January, all as the dates of Emilie's visit to Henry's room on the afternoon of the dinner party.
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimental
27
Several mysteries arise on this multiple date. If Emilie carried away her own room key (1, 285), the key Henry saw her turning in her ringers after her query about his locked coffret (1, 283), how is it possible that her room key is still on his mantelpiece when he returns from the dinner that night (1, 287)? Henry had been distracted by what he saw as the royal beauty of Emilie's hands at the moment he noticed her playing with the key she took away with her, so it is entirely possible that romantic stereotypes blinded him as a theft took place before his very eyes. A set of possibilities for textual exegesis created by the abandonment of the fictional 8 January 1845 date of completion for ESi concerns Flaubert's relationship with Louise Colet, which began in late July 1846. The woman who has a secretaire locked against her husband, a servant named Catherine and a best friend named Aglae who acts as a boite aux lettres for the correspondence with a younger lover, and whose age is indicated only by the presence of white hairs, is called Emilie in Flaubert's novel and Louise Colet elsewhere. Louise's notoriety derived in part from her publication of the correspondence between Benjamin Constant and Mme Recamier; she was accused of stealing the letters (Cle 86, 102, 144, 156, 117, 178). Henry's coffret is interesting on its own account as well. In JESII, Marie Arnoux's coffret will be associated with New Year's Day in its multiple definitions including that of / January•, the date of Adolphe Schlesinger's birth in 1842. Henry's coffret, with the false bottom in which he stores his correspondence with Jules, is also a New Year's gift (1, 282-4, 339), and Emilie is seen to be suddenly slimmer around the waist on the / January 184.0 of the Renaud dinner party (1, 285). The moment that is both December 1839 and January 1840 signals the presence of both Elisa Schlesinger, who gave birth on a / January, and Louise Colet, who was pregnant in December i8jg, in the composite creation which is Emilie Renaud. Further indications of Elisa's presence in ESi involve the Dubois and Lenoir families, mainly associated with this first dinner party and with the Mid-Lent ball held in the Pension Renaud on the night of 26-j March 1840. At the December/
28
Where Flaubert lies
January dinner, the Dubois and Lenoir families are first introduced, and it is here that the reason for the omission of Henry's first sight of Emilie at the time of his arrival in her home is suggested: / November i8jg as the date of Emile Judee's death is encoded but not written in the text. As a secret, it is an absence that is signalled but not specified. What takes its place are the names Lenoir and Dubois, synonyms of Maurice and Schlesinger respectively (ECS, 32, 247). Maurice the Moor is the dark-skinned man, further synonyms for whose first name appear in the names Morel, Maurissot and Morico in ESi. Schlesinger is the man from Silesia, forest or wooded country, hence its application as a German term for the sluice gate traditionally made of alder wood. The Lenoirs have a daughter named Clara and a son, Adolphe, dressed in an artillery uniform. The complicated affiliation system linking the Renaud, Dubois and Lenoir families is never penetrated by Henry, who is so myopic in every sense that he does not identify the man in the blue coat who is also the handsome young dandy with the lorgnon, even though he apes his amorous rival's every accoutrement. Still, the narrator is forced to admit that all he knows of M. Dubois is the view of his back clad in the blue coat, so Henry's myopia is contagious (1, 286, 301, 305). The Dubois have one daughter, Hortense (1, 286), later described at the raout of 16/26 March 184.0 as Clara Lenoir's 'grande cousine' (1, 301). This Hortense Dubois is described as flirting with Mile Aglae's brother while Clara Lenoir dances with her father; but what Henry and the narrator overlook is that M. Dubois, Mile Aglae and Mme Lenoir are siblings, hence that Hortense is dancing with her own (step-)father. M. Renaud and Mme Dubois are godparents of her husband's brother-in-law's child (1, 286), and Flaubert throws in a country cousin to complicate matters, but this should not divert the reader's attention from M. Dubois's status as the much younger husband of the forty-seven-year-old Mme Dubois (1, 286) and the brother of both Mme Lenoir and the twenty-five-year-old Aglae (1, 285). Hence, the child of M. Dubois's brother-in-law is Clara Lenoir. Since Emilie and Aglae are old school friends, it
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimentale}
29
is implied that Emilie is around twenty-five, one of the Temmes de trente ans' (1, 284) so appreciated by the Balzac-inspired narrator; but since Jules, from his vantage point as a person under twenty, associates the age of thirty with white hair (1, 288), it appears that age is a matter of point of view. In autobiographical terms, the Lenoir—Dubois combination says that Clara Lenoir (alias Marie-Adele Schlesinger) is the child of 'M. Maurice' and that Adolphe Lenoir is the son of 'Mme Maurice'. The reason Henry cannot combine the young man with the lorgnon, the M. Dubois who wears a blue coat and the M. Dubois who is Aglae's brother (1, 304) is that the discrepancy in age between the Dubois spouses has made him discount the possibility of relationship. M. Dubois is Gustave's way of inserting himself into Elisa's life as the future husband of a woman with a daughter who is too old to be his. Through the Lenoir family, he expresses his feelings about watching Adolphe grow up as another man's pride and joy; through the Dubois family, he satirises the pathetic aspects of an infatuation with a woman too old for him. Further evidence of Elisa's presence in the text involves a quirky coincidence of events maintained from ESi to the nouvelle version of MB and on to the definitive version of that novel as well as ESn itself. All concern a man on a staircase calling out to his wife: Ma femme! ma femme! cria une voix dans l'escalier. (1, 285) Ma femme! ma femme! cria Charles dans l'escalier. (NV, 444) Ma femme! ma femme! cria Charles. (1, 644) Ma femme, es-tu prete? cria le sieur Arnoux apparaissant dans le capot de Pescalier. (n, 10) - and the dates are revelatory of Flaubert's methods. In ESi, M. Renaud calls out to the Emilie who was supposedly on her way to the attic when she entered Henry's room, and the date is 22 December/1 January. In the NV of MB, Charles calls out to Emma, who had also set out on her way to the attic, but this time the date is an 11/21 September/December which also equals 31 December and / October. The first is New Year's Day and the
30
Where Flaubert lies
second New Year's Eve. By the time of MB's definitive version, the date is 3/14 September/December for the same event, and the discrepancy of a day is repeated on the opening date of ES11, 4/15 September/December 1840, as Arnoux calls out to his
wife at the very moment her eyes meet Frederic's after the saving of the shawl. The most interesting of these events is that of the JVV of MB, where Emma sees Charles in the bedroom putting on a redingote, though Charles will later claim that he's just come from the Cafe Frangais. The man in the redingote in Emma's bedroom is both Charles and a non-Charles, a husband and a lover, Henry and Frederic, Gustave Flaubert as Elisa's lover. The 15/25 December coincidence makes all these events occur either on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, since Christmas was a long-time year's beginning (JJB, 92), so they are reenactments of the transition from 31 December 1843 to / January 1844, t n a t epoch-making moment that saw the death of a failed law student and the birth of an invalid/writer through the progression from the saint-Sylvestre at Vernon to the crise de PontVEveque on Adolphe Schlesinger's second birthday. Flaubert has reversed the dates of adultery and crisis in an act of autocensorship which is self-reflexive: when he sets the action on the date of his attack, he tells a story of a woman who is interrupted by her husband during a visit to the bedroom of a young man who is a guest in her husband's house. When he sets the action on the date of his New Year's Eve visit to the Schlesinger's, he tells the story of a crise nerveuse whose symptoms are compared by Homais to veritable attacks of epilepsy in a greyhound owned by a Morel (jVT7", 448). Emilie Renaud's affair with another Morel will be discussed later. In the meantime, Henry's locked correspondence case of 12/22 December in ESi becomes Rodolphe's securely locked biscuit tin containing letters from women on 11/21 December in MB (JW, 437).
When Henry sees Emilie as merely another man's wife, the tone in the narrator's description of her is patronising and critical; when Henry sees Emilie as a mirror for his own vanity through the black bandeaux in which he sees his reflection (1, 292), she is utterly transformed. Yet there are other differ-
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimentale*
31
ences which signal the presence of at least two separate women in Emilie Renaud, and one of those women is a desperate nymphomaniac whose flight to the attic via a young man's bedroom is both a pretence and a suicide. Henry and Jules display their youth through their belief in New Year's Day as a moment of re-creation and novelty, and the narrator shares this illusion (1, 282, 289, 318). However, the supernarrator, or author if you will, selects incidents in such a way that all three naive characters, including the narrator who is unaccustomed to drawing conclusions from the evidence of his eyes, are shown to be blind to the role played by the past in the affairs of the present. When Henry visits Morel for the first time on 21/31 December i8jg/2i/ji January 1840, it is revealed that Morel arrived at Henry's home town ten years ago (1, 290), and that he and the other young men of the town shared the favours of a grisette whose name is not revealed because Henry interrupts Morel and substitutes the name Rosalinde (1, 291). Henry has already been associated with several prior relationships, including one with a woman who tormented him (1, 279), but he seems determined that the name of the woman he later defines as a 'marchande de corsets', whom he passed on his way to college (1, 324), will not be revealed. It is Jules who reveals the name of this 'lingere' who toyed with his affections while giving herself to Henry and his friends, and Mme Herminie's name is inscribed on the date of Henry's depucelage with Emilie Renaud (1, 314). The reader might be excused for believing that Mme Herminie gained an undeserved reputation as an initiatrice on the strength of the boastings of adolescent males, since both Jules and Henry seem to have been toyed with or tormented by Mme Herminie, while all the time believing that everyone else was enjoying her favours. Since the ermine symbolises 'la perte du pucelage' (Cle 71, 205) among other things, Mme Herminie occupies a role which is more archetypal than experiential. Morel is another of the 'fantasy' lovers of Mme Herminie, according to his own boastings, but the fact that Emilie detests
32
Where Flaubert lies
Morel and tells Henry to stay away from him (i, 323), combined with Morel's presence as a student at the Pension Renaud ten years previously, at the time of Emilie's first adulterous affair (1, 291, 324), gives reason for suspicion. Although Morel is the one who urges Henry to take on Emilie as a sexual conquest on this 21/31 December i8jg day, he is both envious and bored on the Pont de la Concorde on 13 August 1840 when he has to endure Henry's triumphal boastings (1, 320). This is the attitude of a man who has passed an old mistress on to a younger man, and Morel has more to endure at the time of the elopement, when his rendezvous with Henry in the 'galerie vitree' of the PalaisRoyal is the alibi for the flight of Henry and Emilie from Paris (1, 331). During Henry's first visit, Morel looks at himself in the mirror while interpreting the expression on Henry's face as he urges the affair with Emilie (1, 291); and the implied mirror images here indicate that Henry is just a reflection, at a tenyear remove, of Morel, to whom falls the duty of writing to the Gosselin parents and shepherding them through the events of the elopement's aftermath. It is at this time that Catherine, the servant who is also involved in a clandestine affair with M. Renaud, asks her employer if Morel came to see Emilie. Renaud's answer is a silence (1, 341). The 21/31 December timing of the highlighting of the relationship between the older Morel and the younger Henry will recur in ESn through the relationship between Arnoux and Frederic, especially in the context of sharing women; but it should be noted here that the date is also 21/31 January 1840 for the suppression of Herminie's name in favour of la Rosalinde. 21 January is the feast of St Agnes (AF, 35), hallowed symbol of whiteness and purity, and this suggests a pun on Herminie's name: hermine and roselet are synonyms, as our epigraph indicates. 21 January is associated with a ten-year interval, the one separating the destinies of Morel and Henry. Another tenyear interval concerning 21 January involves the recorded birthdates of Marie-Adele Schlesinger and Desiree-Caroline Hamard, 21 January 1836 and 21 January 1846 respectively. If, as it appears, these are false birthdates, the mystery remains as to who chose them.
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimentale3
33
It is possible to situate the three-day time run which begins with the writing of Jules's second letter and ends with Henry's visit to Morel through Jules's statement that Easter is four months away and the narrator's statement that Henry receives the letter on a December day. Easter fell on ig April 1840 (JJB, 140), so the letter was written on ig/2g December i8jg. This means that Jules's nostalgic visit the previous Saturday (1, 288) to the college he and Henry attended occurs on Saturday 14 December i8jg, the very day Gustave Flaubert was expelled from the College Royal de Rouen following a riot which occurred on g December i8jg (Lottman, 68). Jules meets Bernardi on a Sunday, and Lucinde and Artemise a week later, upon which occasion he watches a vaudeville rehearsal and a performance of Antony, whose premiere on 3 May 1831 was another triumph for Romanticism (Ci, 846). On the following day, Jules notices that the birds have returned to the still leafless trees, a reminder that Valentine's Day is based on the mating and nesting habits of birds which have migrated following their winter absence (Attwater, 334). This would indicate that Jules met Bernardi on Sunday 16 February 1840, a date which also equals 6 February through the calendar change of 6/16 February 1682, and that Jules's reading of the first four acts of Le Chevalier de Calatrava on the day associated with returning birds is 14/24 February 1840. 25 February 1840, the date
on which Jules was supposed to read his hastily completed fifth act to Bernardi's troupe, is the tenth anniversary of the premiere of Hernani, Romanticism's great night of triumph over Classicism in the theatre. Henry's and Jules's stories are temporally interwoven in February 1840. Emilie gives Henry a rendezvous for the Tuileries Gardens on 11/21 February 1840, exactly eight years before Marie Arnoux agrees to meet Frederic in the Rue Tronchet on the following day, 12/22 February 1848. While Henry waits in vain on 12/22 February 1840, he looks at the windows of the palace, thinking of all the sovereigns and ministers who have spent time there. Renaud was reading the Debats on 21 February 1840, the night after Nemours's endowment was rejected, and
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Where Flaubert lies
Henry is outside the Tuileries on the very date the Soult ministry fell as a result of this refusal (J&T, 125), 22 February 1840; yet Henry and the narrator of ESi are as little concerned with politics as Frederic Moreau will be at the beginning of the revolution on 12/22 February 1848. Night fell at 4 p.m. on the 22 December i8jg evening of the first Renaud dinner, yet it falls at exactly the same time two months later as Henry waits in the Tuileries Gardens on 22 February 1840, indicating a 22 December/February coincidence
which makes the Renaud dinner occur on 22 February, the date of St Peter's Banquet {fete), as well. Emilie steals Henry's key on one of the dates belonging to the great Keybearer. The December/January equivalence established at the time of the dinner now becomes a December/January/February coincidence. The month of Flaubert's birth is becoming common currency, as is his 12/13/22/23 December birthdate, and if we accept the notion that a person's identity can be encoded in the text through his/her birthdate, then Flaubert defines his own identity as being intimately connected with the idea of a failed rendezvous or elopement which he associates with his own birthday through the 12 December/22 February parallel. The six-month rule which Flaubert uses as an easily decipherable method of encoding equivalences produces some interesting parallels. Emilie's act of tormenting occurs on an // August which coincides with one of the dates for the Armenian epoch (Nicolas, 19), and the ermine is an Armenius mus by derivation. Emilie is taking the place of Herminie as the woman who tormented Henry (1, 279) and her identity as Dame Hermeline is indicated by her repeated association with whiteness: she wears a white smock (1, 282), dress (1, 285) or shawl (1, 294), and is also seen as all in white (1, 312, 331) or merely as something white (1, 320). This whiteness which has given the ermine its power to symbolise purity and justice (Cle 71, 205) is also contained in Emilie's name, deriving from amal, & word denoting both spotlessness and work as stroke upon stroke (CY, 141, 329); but this name has long been confused with both Emma and Herminie (CY, 333; D&G, 83-4, 128), the latter meaning 'public' or 'universal'. Mme Herminie's putative
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimentaW
35
availability is contained in her name. Emilie, on the other hand, is more like a contre-hermine or hermines in view of her black hair with an imperceptible white line behind her ear where her hair is beginning to fall out (1, 282). Names are as important as dates in ESi, and it is entirely possible that the name Emilie was chosen for its ability to capture Elisa Foucault's identity as both Mme Maurice Schlesinger and Mme Emile Judee, for Emilie will be associated with both black and white before the story finishes. Similarly, the surname Renaud may well have been chosen for the derivation of the verb renauder from either Renaud or Renard. This reference to Louise Colet's behaviour patterns will emerge through the events of 1/12 July 1840, but the similarity of the verbs renauder and arnauder suggests that Marie Arnoux will be another composite figure of Elisa and Louise. Further implications of the February/August equivalence are the parallel between Jules's first meeting with Lucinde and Artemise on 13/23 February 1840 and the events of 13 August 1837:
this is the date of Bouvard's Sunday encounter with Pecuchet on the Boulevard Bourdon and of the Sunday visit to Zorai'de Turc's establishment in ESn. All three events occur on the Lord's Day, and Jules sees the blue-clad Lucinde as an immaculate Virgin from the moment of his first meeting with her; but the fact that this encounter occurs on the first anniversary of Gustave Flaubert's depucelage at the brothel in the Rue du Platre on 23 February i83g (Douchin, 57) suggests that Lucinde is very different from Jules's vision of her. 13 August is also the festival of Diana/Artemis (Scullard, 173), as well as reappearing six months later as the date of Morel's farewell to Henry on the Pont de la Concorde. The December/February coincidence also makes the introduction of Lucinde's blue cachemire with the red fringe occur on 13 December, Gustave's secret birthday, and implies that the cachemire as cache-mire is an essential element in Flaubert's novelistic method. To indicate by hiding, to narrate by what is disguised or covered, to look through or mirror what is veiled, will be a recurring procedure. The 22 February/August failed rendezvous is obviously an emotionally charged event in Flaubert's fictional universe, one
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Where Flaubert lies
in which the young man's vigil is described in detail in such a way as to create a strong sense of identification and sympathy in the reader. Further possibilities for association lie in the coincidence that 22 August iygg was the date of Napoleon's abandonment of his troops in Egypt (AF, 259) and that 22 August 1846 was the notional conception date for Louis Le Poittevin, Alfred's son (D33, 55). The swans who are the only witnesses of Henry's disappointment, besides being doubles of the contre-hermine in their white-on-black identity, are symbols of secret brotherhood (Cle 71, 150). The sense of abandonment of 22 February /August may well be that of brotherhood betrayed. Mid-Lent is the only time that the ball, raout or evening of dancing (1, 301) could be held at such a respectably bourgeois institution as the Pension Renaud, for we have passed mardi gras 1840 but not yet reached Henry's return home for the Easter holidays. This time the calendar change of 16/26 March 1631 is chosen as a beginning point for a new stage in the novel's development. The night of 26-y March 1840 also sees the MidLent Opera ball attended by Morel and by Dinah de la Baudraye in Balzac's La Muse du departement. Henry is humiliated when Emilie trifles with him over his refusal to waltz and when he is thrown by his horse in the Bois de Boulogne. The drenching Henry receives at this time, on 1712J March, parallels the timing of the lavatio, held on 27 March in Republican Rome and on 4 April under the empire. A further indication of the dating is afforded by Morel's wounded knee: Silenus wounded his knee through a fall from his ass at the Liberalia honouring Bacchus on iy March [Fasti, 177), so this day of the coming-ofage ceremony for Roman youths is an appropriate time for Henry to attempt to prove his manhood through equestrian feats. Henry's rosse baulks as he attempts to take a jump, one of his sous-pieds breaks so that his trouser leg is sent riding up to his knee, his whip snaps and the brim of his hat, laden with rain water, falls down around his eyes. This episode would also appear to have an autobiographical source in Gustave's caventure assez aquatique' of 1843 (Ci, 176-7).
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimentale3
37
No less humorous is the description of Morel's apartment the same evening. All is 'pele-mele, bouscule, confondu': a cloak has knocked over the inkwell, a boot is in a hat, combs in a book, a tie in the washbasin, gloves in the chamberpot, and so on (1, 304). The sudden illumination of this scene through the opening of the curtains is a 'legon morale' lost on Henry, but Morel's conversation contains variations of the names in his and Henry's lives, and the intertwined dialogue of the crosspurpose speakers suggests that the antics of Maurissot, Irma, Henriette and Louisa are somehow relevant to Morel, Herminie, Henry and his sister, Louise. The sense of humiliation combined with a friendship at cross purposes on a 17 March may be read as a version of the events of ij September i84g, the night Du Camp and Bouilhet told Flaubert to burn TSA and never to mention it again (1, 24—5). All the disasters of 77/27 March 1840 can be seen as impediments to the literary vocation. The coincidence with 77/27 September/4 October makes the Renaud ball occur on the same dates as the ball at La Vaubyessard in MB (NV). Whether Flaubert's protagonist is dazzled by wealth or by the glamour of the waltz, the attraction to life's pleasures, including romantic love, is seen as undermining the literary enterprise, as is exemplified in the chaos of Morel's apartment. Morel's lie about having wounded his knee a few moments previously by hitting it against his table is exposed when he later complains that it is a result of all the dancing he did at the Opera masked ball. The 77/27 March date will be the site of the great battle between Classicism and Romanticism on the day of the Gosselins' arrival in Paris after the 1841 elopement. If it also coincides with the date of the rejection of TSA, iy September i84g, then the literary dimension of these dates is adequately explained. Emilie's interest in M. Dubois on this iy/2y March (which is also Vigny's birthday) brings together literary and amorous rivalries with a humiliation for our 'heros' in both spheres. The importance of this thrice-repeated multiple moment is indicated further by its placement in the very beginning: if Henry and Mme Gosselin arrived in Paris on 5 October, it follows that they left home on 77/27 September/4 October i8jg, exactly ten years
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Where Flaubert lies
before the moment of utter misery and disappointment on iy September 1849.
In £$11, 23-4 April 1843 is the Alhambra night which is also 3-4 May, a coincidence indicated by the mention of Shakespeare, whose death on 23 April 1616 occurred on the same date as Cervantes's - but ten days later through the fact that Spain had changed calendars and England had not (JJB, 188). In Gregorian time, Shakespeare's death occurred on 3 May 1616, which is why some extra time seems to have elapsed between Frederic's parting from Deslauriers and Clemence in the early hours of 24 April and his return home later in the morning. It is now both 24 April and 4 May, the date of Deslauriers's depucelage and Frederic's temptation to jump from the Pont de la Concorde. Flaubert's encounter with 'Eulalie Foucaud' in Marseille on Saturday 24 October 1840 is the possible basis for Henry's seduction of Emilie Renaud and sexual initiation on 24 April 1840, two nights after his departure from his home town, at which time the maid handed him his manteau. The episode of Henry's return is surrounded in mystery. There is the question of what happens on the day of his arrival in Paris from the moment he reaches out to ring the bell of the Pension Renaud. All we may assume is that he bought and sent the sachet in accordance with Jules's instructions, since Jules has received it by the time he writes to Henry. The chronological discrepancies surrounding Henry's seduction of Emilie and Jules's abandonment by Bernardi's troupe are meant to confuse the reader, to place a cave canem at the spot where Fox disappears from the text. If Jules writes 'hier' for the departure of the troupe, then he must be writing on the day which will see the seduction in the evening, since Henry receives the letter the following morning, just as he has finished his account of the seduction in a letter to Jules. Hence, Jules learns of Lucinde's departure about thirty-six hours before the seduction in the Pension Renaud, and is tempted to drown himself and the beggar girl a few hours later. In ESn, Frederic's temptation to drown himself occurs during the time of Deslauriers's seduction of Clemence Daviou, both events occurring on 24 April/4 May
The colours of time in the first eEducation sentimentale3
39
1843, two days after the failure of Les Burgraves which signalled the collapse of Romanticism. Only the 12/13 coincidence will enable the two events to occur simultaneously in ESi, on 23/24 and 24/25 April respectively. Fox is first introduced on 21/22 April 1840 as a black spaniel with a white spot. This reproduction of Emilie's black hair with its white line occurs exactly six months after Henry's first glimpse of Emilie on 22 October/1 November 1839, and of his encounter with the perruche rouge on the day of his mother's announcement of her departure. Fox was given to Jules three years before 12/22 April 1840 (1, 310). At the time of his 'return', it is revealed that he was given to Jules on a Thursday, 'un jour de fete' (1, 352). La saint-Jules is 12 April, but it was a Wednesday in 1837, so the date is Thursday 12/13 April 1837, in accordance with the 12/13 coincidence of Flaubert's birth. Fox's name is a theme in itself: it is the English translation of Renard/Renaud, and the English fox-hunting season begins on / November, the date of Henry's entry to the Pension Renaud. A fox is a reddish-brown dog, hence an equivalent of the ermine in summer or youth. As a spaniel, Fox is a Spanish dog etymologically, and Spain by derivation is the country of rabbits, so that Fox is a Spanish perro, a French roquet and an equivalent of the perruche rouge of 22 October/1 November 1839, as
well as being a rabbit. As a black dog with a white spot, he is a contre-hermine, but, since, as the text assures us, all things have 'leur image reciproque' (1, 330), it should not surprise us that 'Fox' returns as a white dog with a black spot (1, 352), hence an ermine in its most conventional image. It is on 1/12 July 1840 that Emilie lives down to her selfcharacterisation as a spoiled child (1, 317). Because of the game of feigned jealousy she plays with Renaud for Henry's benefit, Mendes is almost deprived of the medical ministrations of Dr Dulaurier for the treatment of his venereal affliction. Two events, then, characterise this summer night which falls 'plus de six mois' after Mendes's first sight of Mme Dubois on 1/12/ 22 December 1839, and at least three weeks before the beginning of August, since this is the period during which Dr Dulaurier's
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Where Flaubert lies
coupe jaune (i, 319) is seen at the Pension Renaud: a woman feigns indignation and a man receives a diagnosis of venereal disease. Because of the 1/12 December/January equivalence at the time of the first Renaud dinner, it follows that 1/12 June/ July 1840 is the time of these two events. On 12 June 1840, the pregnant Louise Colet attempted to stab Alphonse Karr with a kitchen knife because of allegations which appeared in Karr's journal, Les Guepes, as to the paternity of her child (Ci, 889). On / July 1850, Flaubert and Du Camp returned to the Kars el-Ami hospital which they had first visited on 22 December i84g (11, 601, 565), ten years to the day after the first Renaud dinner. Flaubert's description of the syphilis cases is all too graphic, and the only remaining question is whether he or Du Camp was in search of a cure at the time of the return visit of / July 1850.
Elisa is tainted by contamination with Louise's behaviour in this combination of events, people and dates: the 1 January/July equivalence makes the date of Louise's histrionics coincide with the date of Adolphe's birth so that both appear to be the subject of lies and pretence, and the birth of a child is equated with a case of syphilis. Henry's farewell outing with Morel at the time of the full moon in August 1840, hence on 13 August 1840, is another example of a portrayal of the non-narrated through the narrated. Flaubert's technique is to bore the reader with stereotypes so that inattention to detail will ensue and the encoded messages will pass unnoticed by all but the observant. Morel is clearly frustrated by Henry's boastings to the point where he must take leave of his friend, but Henry does not realize that his repetition of the assurance that Morel cannot possibly know the joy of possessing Emilie takes Morel past the point of endurance. The mature man's confession of envy of the young man's position (1, 320) satisfies Henry's vanity but leaves much unsaid in this subtle text. Since this date is exactly six months after Bernardi led Jules towards his own mistress, Lucinde, on 13/23 February 1840, both scenarios represent an older man who shares a mistress
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimentaW
41
with a younger man but cannot acknowledge this state of affairs. The grand elopement of ESi has two stages: the departure from Paris by the night coach of Saturday 13 March 1841, and the embarkation on board the Aimable-Constance on Monday 15 March
1841. These alternative dating possibilities for the elopement have implications for the other elopements in Flaubert's fictions: in the NV of MB, the projected date for the elopement which didn't occur was 12 September/December 1842; in the DV, the date for the same unrealised event is 4/15 September/December 1843. In ESn, the opening date, 4/15 September/December 1840, indicates
that the Schlesinger honeymoon is the disguised reason for the voyage aboard the Ville-de-Montereau. Some of these dates have autobiographical significance for Flaubert: 12-13 March 1841 is twenty years after his notional conception date, and 12 December 1842 is his official majority, a facet of things indicated by Gosselin's observation that his son is twenty and Morel's statement that Henry is a minor in March 1841 (1, 337—8). Further autobiographical dimensions of the elopement involve the names 'Capitaine Nicole' and 'Aimable-Constance' as the triggers for Henry's flight. These names, which summon Henry to his American adventure, are forms of Nicolas and AchilleCleophas Flaubert, the grandfather and father of Gustave. This book, which encodes a real or fantastic paternity of Adolphe Schlesinger, counts four generations from Nicolas to Adolphe, and the penultimate link in the chain has a name which, besides signalling Gustave's birth on 13 December, la saint-Josselin (AF, 378), is evidence of immaturity in a hero who is little more than a child. Capitaine Nicole's summons on 12/22 March 1841 anticipates Caroline-Josephine's death on 22 March 1846 by five years; the Aimable-Constance's departure on 15 January/'February/
March 1841 anticipates Achille-Cleophas's death on IJ January 1846 by five years. Just as the mock castration of the brothel was linked to the mother's departure at the novel's beginning, so now the flight with a mistress is linked with the deaths of a sister and father.
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Where Flaubert lies
Though 12 March 1841 is initially equated with the first 'belles journees' of the year, the narrator refers to the cold and thick fog of winter nights at the time of the arrival in Le Havre (1, 331). This suggests the equivalence January/February/March 1841,
which will be complicated by the six-month coincidence indicated in the observation that Henry burns two years' work when he's only been in Paris since October 1839, and in the statement that spring and autumn often have similar characteristics (1, 329-30). These coincidences create certain equivalences. The elopement occurs on the date, 13/23 February, of Jules's first sight of Lucinde and Artemise; the night of the holocaust of the past through the burning of their papers occurs on the first anniversary of Henry's vain wait in the Tuileries Gardens on 12/22 February 1840, when swans were the only witnesses to his vigil. It is significant, therefore, that this is the date of the introduction of Emilie's old black pelisse (1, 328), at the moment of transvestitism wherein Henry packs some of Emilie's clothes and she some of his, and where Henry claims that he will wear Emilie's pelisse instead of the manteau which he claims not to have, in spite of the narrator's statement that the maid handed Henry his manteau when he left home after the Easter holidays (1, 311). It is on the evening of 14/24 January IFebruary /March 1841 that
Emilie's pelisse is described in detail. It is an old black satin pelisse, with sleeves and a hood, padded, lined with ermine dotted with brown spots, a supple garment full of soft caresses and warm intimacies, and Emilie uses it to embrace Henry in a oneness which makes him her son (1, 331). It is immediately after that moment of intimacy that Henry's disgust with Emilie begins: he notices that, because she is shod in summer bottines, a wave has drenched her feet completely, and this observation leads to the judgement that such thin footwear, one of Emilie's manies appreciated by Henry in the past, can be spoiled by 'une tache de boue' (1, 331). This image derives from the ermine's role as an emblem of royalty/aristocracy: Aelian claimed that, if an ermine falls into the mire, it is paralysed and dies, whence its suitability as the equivalent of the royal motto 'preferer la mort a la souillure' (Chevalier, 402). Emilie's 'adoption' of
The colours of time in the first (Education sentimentale3
43
Henry through the sharing of a cloak makes her lose the whiteness and purity of the ermine. During the voyage, the pelisse will be further associated with the oneness of Henry's and Emilie's bodies, with the entire existence of a woman, with friendship, maternity, travel and above all with tenacity: as silent witness to all the stages of a woman's life, the cloak is worn until it is threadbare, and never donated to the poor Emilie is further 'sullied' when she decides to make pastries on board the Aimable-Constance, and winds up 'toute barbouillee de farine' (1, 334). Now, even Emilie's pure whiteness becomes the source of a pollution first noticed on a 24 March/1 April, which combines the saving of a couverture on the Nile on 24 March 1850 (11, 580) with the / April 1841 of Adolphe Schlesinger's conception. The revival of the Ancients versus Moderns quarrel on iy March 1841 with the Gosselins' visit to the Pension Renaud has many ironic aspects. First, the discovery of a copy of NotreDame de Paris inscribed with the name 'Emilie' is the occasion for Gosselin's expression of hatred for Romanticism (1, 337, 340), even though he shares a surname with the publisher of Notre-Dame, which appeared on 75 March 1831, exactly ten years before the departure for America of the Aimable-Constance. Similarly, Gosselin's admonition, 'lisez les classiques, lisez Racine, lisez Boileau' (1, 340), points to the coincidence that the departure from Paris occurred on the anniversary of Boileau's death on 13 March iyu, just as the first Renaud dinner occurred on the three-hundredth anniversary of Racine's baptism. Gosselin's arguments themselves are occurring on the anniversary of Moliere's death, iy February. The definition of Romanticism as literary poison (i, 337) anticipates Homais's objections to UAmour conjugal on iy August 1844 in MB. In both cases, indignation over a book produces an eccentric rendering of the form of its title: UAmour...
conjugal and JVotre-Da-me-de-Pa-ris.
iy March/ September, as the situation of a literary quarrel, is a reminder of the great humiliation of iy September 1849. The total rejection of La Tentation de saint Antoine by Flaubert's trusted friends was so painful an event that this lyl2y March/September
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Where Flaubert lies
date occurs three times in ESv. as the setting for the Bois de Boulogne humiliation, for Gosselin's vilification of Hugo's novel and for the final confrontation between Henry and Renaud in 1846. It is also the moment when the revelation of Renaud's clandestine relationship with Catherine, the servant, is followed immediately by Catherine's seduction by Mendes, who promises silence about the affair in return for Catherine's favours. For a moment, Catherine becomes Gustave on this iy March when the servant's hands, scalded by their contact with boiling water, become the equivalents of the writer's instruments. Illicit sexuality and the scarring occasioned by one's metier are the messages of this equivalent of the rejection of 7X4. And the January/February/March coincidence here is indicated not only by the references to winter but also by the timing of the arrival of Henry's letter to his parents, a letter written after his arrival in New York. Morel advises the Gosselins to return home a month after the iy March quarrel, and Henry's letter arrives three weeks after their arrival home, hence on g/ig May 1841. Since Capitaine Nicole defined the duration of the non-stop voyage to New York as two months, the January coincidence makes the quarrel at the Pension Renaud occur on lyl2y January 1841. The uproar over Romanticism occurs therefore on the anniversary of the beginning of the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns on 2y January i68y. One of the most convincing arguments for a later completion date than 8 January 1845 for ESi is the ages of Jules and Henry in the latter stages of the action. The Henry who is eighteen in October and December 1839 as well as in January 1840, twenty by iy March 1841 and around twenty-five (1, 348) at the time of the confrontation with Renaud in front of the Luxembourg must have been born in the first quarter of 1821, so the fact that he is twenty-seven and Jules twenty-six towards the end of the novel (1, 369) gives 1848 for that moment of the action. The Luxembourg 'duel' and the return of'Fox', then, occur in 1846. 5 October 1846 seems indicated for Jules's confrontation with the dog, since the season is autumn (1, 351) and the time is that of
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimentaW
45
the full moon (1, 352). The preceding day, 4 October 1846, is the date for Henry's confrontation with Renaud '[a] peu pres dans ce temps-la' (1, 349). Through coincidences established earlier, these dates are equivalent to 17/27-18/28 March/September as well, and once again, the events of the night of 77-/5 September i84g reappear painfully. This night seems etched in Flaubert's mind as one of a confrontation which he would at first like to have resolved to the satisfaction of his vanity, much as Henry paid off Renaud for past humiliations, but which he later managed to accept on its own terms as a necessary irruption of the claims of the other. Henry inflicts a drenching on Renaud which is a kind of 'poetic justice' for the humiliating drenching he received six years previously. Renaud's lavatio is an example of 'poetic justice' in that it is Henry's and the bookseller's revenge for the confiscation of the copy of Notre-Dame de Paris on the same date five years earlier, on 17/27 March/September/4 April/ October 1841. Its link with the lavatio of 17/27 March/4 April 1840 is indicated
by Henry's garb: like the blue-coated Dubois at his first appearance, Henry sports 'Une fine redingote bleue' with a white camellia in its lapel; instead of the whip which shattered at the moment of his humiliation, Henry now carries a cane which he uses as a whip to split Renaud's hat in half (1, 348). Where Henry's father loathed the use of the lorgnon (1, 335), M. Dubois evidently wore one even prior to its appearance in the Bois de Boulogne, for Henry had aped its use on the day of the Tuileries humiliation in February 1840. Gosselin wore spectacles, and the narrator associates the colour of the glass in one's spectacles with one's view of the world (1, 330), as does Flaubert (Ci, 319), so Renaud's wearing of blue spectacles indicates that it is his perception of the blue-coated Henry as a dandy which is as important to Henry's power over his older rival as any objective quality of Henry's appearance. Henry's canne dejonc is copied from his father's, and Gosselin's sideburns, which seem to cut his cheeks in two (1, 335), form the basis for the attack on Renaud during which the blue glass from the old man's spectacles cuts his cheek as a result of Henry's blow (1, 348). Although Henry is the aggressor and his attacks on
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Renaud have shown a far-from-appealing violence, the witnesses support Henry. They are led by the bouquiniste, whose anger at Renaud stems from the confiscated novel and from the books Renaud seizes from his stand to hurl at Henry during the confrontation. The first book, which is drenched in the gutter then squashed by an omnibus, anticipates Renaud's fate as a result of Henry's attack as well as recalling Henry's fate in the Bois de Boulogne. Jules's confrontation with Fox occurs on one of the days the mundus was opened and the infernal spirits let loose in Rome (Fasti, 419). 5 October is therefore one of the dates of the rape/ return of Persephone, herself a figure derived from the Persian religion according to Creuzer (p. 368), whom Gustave read on the night of 4-5 April 184.8 as he watched over Alfred's body (Ci, 494). This 5 April/October encounter, therefore, coincides with the afternoon walk during which Alfred's dog followed Gustave on the day preceding Alfred's burial. The dog is the emblem of fidelity as well as being a psychopomp, yet the dog which used to follow Alfred now follows Gustave, before Alfred is even in the ground. The Fox of Rage et impuissance was made of more loyal stuff than that, and Jules's Fox had attempted to return to his old master before being lured back by Lucinde's blandishments on the first and last time we saw him. The horror of the encounter with Fox derives from the capacity, both human and animal, even in the case of 'man's best friend', to replace one beloved object with another. This 5/15/25 October is also the coincidence of Henry's arrival in and of his mother's departure from Paris, which is why the narration of Henry's entry into the capital of the civilised world gives the impression that he is travelling alone. The wound of Mme Gosselin's departure did not last forever, and Henry's gaining and abandoning of Emilie have by this time been followed by other relationships during and after his two/three years in Aix. While Fox seems confined to Jules's life, his name is symbolically relevant to Henry's also, and his appearance, half-blackhalf-white, followed by a denial that this dog is Fox because Fox's black spot was further forward on his body, indicates that Fox is also an ermine, an Emilie-figure. The impossible spot,
The colours of time in the first 'Education sentimentale'
47
contradicted by the original description of Fox as black with a white spot, is also a rebus: the term manteau refers to the back of an animal when the colour of that back is different from the rest of the animal's coat, and is used especially with regard to dogs. Fox is therefore both a Renaud and a pelisse with ermine lining. In terms ofJules's development, the message of the return of the reverse image of Fox is the horror of realising two types of forgetting: the first is the forgetting of those who love us and the second of those we love. Jules's obsession with the loss of Lucinde, and of the vocational possibilities for his own life represented by Bernardi's troupe, had made him overlook the simultaneous loss of Fox. The beribboned sachet was a denial of Fox's existence, as Jules wanted to give Lucinde a daily reminder of himself but failed to see that Fox was already that living, breathing reminder. Fox's association with the manteau/ pelisse that is such an important symbol in ESi derives from the pelisse's role as an insurer of continuous identity. For Henry, Emilie's pelisse was an ongoing witness to all the different stages and relationships of a woman's life, as well as being a promise that this continuous human identity could be shared with another, such as a child or a lover. When 'Fox' returns, he has neither the same name nor the same appearance as Jules's former spaniel, but he does have the thigh abscess that killed Achille-Cleophas (1, 352), and he leads Jules to a vision of the blonde-haired corpse of Lucinde/ Caroline-Josephine, an identification established from Lucinde's first appearance, enveloped from head to toe in the redand-blue shawl which was Gustave's sacred relic (Ci, 402) of the adoring sister who called herself his 'Roquet Savant' (Ci, 82). In a letter of 24 September 1846, the eve of Jules's encounter according to the 25 September/5 October calendar change, Flaubert told Louise Colet that, at the time of his father's death, he had prophesied three burials. The second was his sister's, and he thought his mother's or his niece's would be the third (Ci, 361). Nothing could have prepared him for the shock of Alfred's death, which he defined as occurring at midnight on 3/4 April 1848.
CHAPTER 3
Conception, birth, death in 'Madame Bovary'
What ESi shares with the two versions of MB is that the situation of the action historically is dependent on two events: an elopement for which a day, date and month are provided, and a Mid-Lent masked ball. The elopements occur on Saturday 13 March 1841, Monday 12 September 1842 and Monday 4 September
1843 respectively. Interestingly, time is doubled in the JVV in such a way as to make the planned date Monday 12 September AND December 1842, the official date of Flaubert's majority, and 13 March would be the conception date for one who was born on 13 December, as Gustave Flaubert was. The masked ball in both versions of MB is Thursday ig March 1846\ and in ESi Thursday 26 March 1840. The chart in the Appendix (pp. 289-92) reflects the system of equivalences established in the novel for the frequently repeated transition from March to April and from September to October. The introduction of the Gregorian calendar on 16/26 March 1631, the lavatio of 27 March AND 4/12 April and the Era of Constantinople, which establishes a coincidence of 21 March/1 April/ September (Nicolas, 9) are all operational factors in the chronology of MB, as is indicated by Lheureux's allusion to a dog returning from Constantinople at the time of Djali's escape (1, 601) and by the reference to a three-year interval between Rodolphe's lettre de rupture of 3 September 1843 a n ^ Emma's last visit to La Huchette on 23 March 1846 (1, 679). The usurer Lheureux does not make mistakes about time, so the table also explains his 'time lie' of 26 March 1846 at Emma's funeral: he claims that Emma's visit of Friday 20 March 1846 took place on 48
Conception, birth, death in 'Madame Bovary'
49
Saturday 21 March 1846 (1, 673-4, 689). Since the calendar change makes 21 March the equivalent of 31 March, and since the Era of Constantinople makes 20 March the equivalent of 31 March, it follows that 20 March can be the same date as 21 March through the 31 March which is the end of the financial year (AF, 108).
31 March is a source of contradiction throughout MB. When Charles returns to the flowering peartrees and signs of seasonal rut at Les Bertaux on / April 1836/7/8, he remembers his last visit as having occurred the day before, that is to say, five months ago. Aside from establishing an equivalence of 31 March and 1 November in terms of the novel's chronological system, this confusion on Charles's part, described as 'cet intervalle oublie', points to further multiplications of time. Heloise died six weeks before Theodore Rouault's payment and gift of a turkey on 31 March, hence on iy February. When this date appeared in ESi at the time of the outrage over Xotre-Dame de Paris, it was part of a temporal multiplication which made the date 77/27 February/ March/4 April, and that is exactly what is happening here. This explains the contradiction through which Heloise dies at least eight days after the beginning of spring yet six weeks before 31 March.
The last visit Charles made before promising Heloise that he would not return to Les Bertaux was at the time of thaw described in the plans as occurring in the soft, warm heat of March (XV, 158). Charles's recollections establish that it occurred on 20/31 March. Heloise's death occurs both before and after Rouault's 21 February recovery, which also equals the 31 March of his payment to Charles. Most of the references to Bonapartism in the XV were the object of autocensorship: references to the Hotel des Empereurs (XV, 14, 30), to Emma's similarity to a courtesan or empress with the financial extravagance of an empress (XV, 381, 559), to the toy designed for the King of Rome (XV, 457-8), Homais's reflections on the Legion d'Honneur created by the Emperor Napoleon himself (XV, 129), Heloise's Empire-line dresses (XV, 160), Lieuvain as a Bonapartist (XV, 360), Bovary pere's death after a repas bonapartiste (XV, 506) and his incestuous procedure
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of taking a sexual partner from under the familial roof, plus his frustration at not being awarded the cross he claims the Emperor promised him on the battlefield (NV, 456-7). Homais has a print of the Emperor visiting the sick at Ratisbon in his salon (JW, 278), and Emma's father-in-law regales her with stories of Vienna, Strasbourg, Berlin, his garrison life, seductions and duels at the time of Berthe's baptism (NV, 268). Homais subscribes to this same myth of the Grande Armee as 'nos immortelles phalanges' who have visited every capital in Europe and returned to become the venerable patriarchs of the Cornices Agricoles (JVF, 371). When the other side of the story presents itself on 5 December 1844, in the form of the Blind Man who has returned diseaseridden and impoverished in his blue-black rags and round hat, the description of his body as a 'tete guillotinee' echoes the beadle's description in Part 111, chapter 1 of the Amboise bell which cracked when Louis XVI went to the guillotine. The reference to the execution occurs on the date of Louis Napoleon's conception, and the Blind Man's first appearance occurs on the anniversary of the beginning of Louis XVFs trial on 5 December ijg2 and of Napoleon's desertion of the Grande Armee which was limping home from Russia on 5 December 1812 (AF, What was conveyed through overt allusion in the NV is veiled in the DV through concern for the power of censorship under a second Napoleonic regime. By a system of references to fragments of the Bonapartist myth and by temporal manipulation, Flaubert constructs a language which encodes his condemnation of a style of rule, as well as his admiration for some of its aspects - but in a way that cannot be pinned down in a court of law. Frequently, the Emperor's yellow, parchment-tinted skin (Aretz, 29) becomes France's complexion and that of Flaubert's protagonists: on repeated occasions, yellow soil, curtains, vehicles, wallpaper or paint, blinds or lamps with their shades create an atmosphere imbued with the Napoleonic complexion. Charles's first visit to Les Bertaux is at the core of problems which will recur throughout the novel. There can be no
Conception, birth, death in 'Madame Bovary' doubting the timing of the summons 'vers onze heures' on 5 January, since Charles de Bourgogne had planned to celebrate les Rois on the night of 5 January 14JJ in Loys XI (1, 143). The summons to Les Bertaux on Berchtesnacht raises further questions as to the relationship between names and dates in MB. The name Bouvary/Bouvaret (JVF, 11) is derived from bobo, 'pere' (Lebel, 70, 72), and as such it is the same name as Pepin, royal father of Charlemagne, who died on 24 September 768, the date of Charles Bovary's death in 1847. The names Charles, Emma, Berthe, Pepin/Bovary and Roland/Rollet point to an intersection of history and folklore, of the Rigsmaal and the chronicles of France (CY, 384ff.). If Berthe Bovary has soft feet (1, 606), and asks for her 'petit soulier' at the time of Emma's death (1, 682), it is because, as the White or Bright Lady, she is the personification of the Christmas season who used to be hung in effigy during Carnival and Lent and who brings presents at the year's end (CY, 212-14). Among the many associations which have clustered around the figure of La Reine PedauqueI Berthe aux grands pieds are those of the aurora as the
period of transition between day and night and between seasons. Berthe/Perchta is also associated with St Lucy in popular German tradition (Gubernatis, 1, 254), so the night of the swan maiden or Goosefoot is 12—13 December as well as j—6 January (AF, 378). The blind saint who is protector of eyesight is associated with the winter solstice through the illuminations which characterise her festival at the time of the solstice under the Julian calendar. Berthe is also associated with the solstitial period through her association with brightness and the original date of Christmas, the night of 5-6 January. There are several indications that the visit also occurs on the author's birthday, St Lucy's night: the contradictory indications regarding moonrise and first light suggest the four hours lost at Flaubert's birth, a suggestion which will be repeated at the time of Charles's night ride to Rouen in search of Emma (1, 667-8), when, once again, the beginning point is 11 p.m. and daylight occurs at around 2 a.m. In addition, the timing of the first visit is also described as a 'matinee d'octobre' (NV, 37) in the plans. The 1600-year jubilee of St Ursula and her 11,000 star maidens
51
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in Cologne on 21 October 1837 (B-G, 318) is indicated by the October dating, for Ursula/Ursel/Horsel was another folkloric version of the White Lady Perchta, replaced in the church calendar by Saints Lucy, Gertrude and Ursula. The coincidence with la sainte-Lucie is further indicated by the italicisation of the name Nastasie in Part 1, chapter 2 as a personification of the Resurrection of the winter solstice. The wedding of Charles and Emma is intimately linked to the timing of Heloise's death, for it must occur after the first year of Charles's mourning at the beginning of spring of the following year (NV, 170), or towards the beginning of spring of the year after that (1, 582). The marriage proposal of 2 October 1836 seems guaranteed by the references in the NV to a threeday visit which must end on a Sunday at the beginning of the hunting season so that Charles can be back in Tostes on Monday for market-day (NV, 169). Since the year is also 1837 and 1838, the proposal also occurs on Sunday 1 October 1837 and 30 September 1838 (1, 582).
The timing of the wedding is announced by several hints throughout the novel. First, the colzas are already yellow and the oats are en clochette, seasonal indices of July rather than spring, since the colzas are very late at the time of the July storm of the same year (NV, 196-7). April and July will emerge as equivalents at the time of the birth of Berthe and of Leon's departure, and the reference to guests shorn like sheep 'a la saint-Jean' suggests a 24 March/June equivalence, especially since Charles will remember the nuit conjugale on the night of Emma's death on 24 March 1846. Further, the wedding must take place at the beginning of spring according to the definition of Rouault, who defines this time as / April in the previous year, and at a time which is also towards the beginning of spring. The lavatio establishes 24 March as the equivalent of / April and the Era of Constantinople establishes 4 April as the equivalent of 24 March also. In the reverse direction, 4 April is 77/27 February/March, the time of Heloise's death. A year later, the NV will double March and May at the time of departure. Charles and Emma marry on the / April date of the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise in 1810, and that date is also 14/
Conception, birth, death in 'Madame Bovary3
53
24 February / March/ May, so the accession of Louis XIV, indicated by the reference to forty-three guests who feast for sixteen hours, produces 14 May 1643. ^ w a s a l s o m t n e Y ear ^ 4 3 that Moliere founded the Illustre Theatre, so the coincidence of the launching of a political and a literary career is a cryptic reference to the coincidence of the commencement of the writing of MB in the year of the coup d'etat of December 1851. This cryptic element in the feasting arrangements is indicated by the sheer impossibility of fitting a sixteen-hour feast into the time between the morning procession across the fields and the end of feasting in the evening. Further, the JW makes mention of thirty-seven guests who feasted for eighteen hours, even though forty-seven places have been set, and this is Flaubert's indication that the year of Charles and Emma's marriage is 1837/47. Since Emma was nineteen by the time of her marriage (JW 7-8, 23, 190), she was born between 1818 and 1820. Seen through Charles's eyes shortly after the marriage, Emma is eighteen (JW, 179), but then Charles is described as having been three years at Tostes shortly after the wedding (JW, 194), when he was established there in Autumn 1834. The coincidence of 1/4 April/September created by the Era of Constantinople has made the wedding occur in the spring, summer and autumn of 1837/1839. Two clues from the JW indicate that the ball at La Vaubyessard begins on Wednesday 3 October 1838: the twice-mentioned fires of dead leaves and the full moon on the evening of the return to Tostes. As Emma looks through blue glass on the morning of Thursday 4 October 1838, she sees fires of dead leaves in the countryside (JW, 216), and further reference to these fires is made on the journey home when these Hallowe'en fires are inside the houses, at which time the sad smell of apples announces winter. Then, night comes and the moon rises just after the last horizontal rays of the sun have disappeared (JW, 219-20). The full moon on 4 October 1838 is the only one that fits the circumstances of the ball episode, and this produces a multiple answer to Emma's question as to who put such a gap
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between the morning of the day before yesterday and this evening on Friday 5 October 1838 (NV, 221). Gregory XIII, Maurice Schlesinger and Gustave Flaubert put the hole in Emma's life. J/IJ October 1582 was the very first introduction of the Gregorian calendar. This does not explain the Samhain/ Hallowe'en fires mentioned twice on 4 October 1838. This coincidence can be explained only by Maurice's substitution of 30 October ijg8 for his real birthdate of 3 October iygy. Hence, the midnight moment when the glass is shattered (NV, 212) moves the date from 4—3 October 1837 to Wednesday—Thursday 3—4/30—1 October 1838 in the NV.
From the midnight moment which announces the coming of the 4/31 October of the Hallowe'en fires, we are at an important moment in the chronology of MB: 4 October is the date of Berthe's conception a year after the ball (NV, 63). The draped female figure on the stove, the segregation of the sexes for the dinner of the previous evening, the double mention of pomegranates and the adornments of the ladies' coiffures all indicate that the ball occurs at the time of the Greek Thesmophoria, which can be dated according to the parallel rites of Ceres in Rome, giving a commencing date for Athens of 3 October (Scullard, 190—1). The year 1838, necessitated by seasonal indices in the NV, replaced 1837, the year indicated in Charles's biography, through the dropping of a year and twenty-seven days. Through the omission of those indices in the DV, the year 1837 fits the linear chronology based on the life of Charles and 1839 the ten-year plan. The period between the ball and the move to Yonville is subject to another late-March confusion after a set of clear indices re temporal progression: the beginning of winter of the ball year is indicated (NV, 222), then the sale of Charles's horse 'vers les fetes de Noel' (NV, 225), his winning of a medal 'a la fin de l'annee' (NV, 228), followed by the first warmth of spring and Emma's suffocation at the flowering peartrees of April (NV, 230). From July to October that year is taken up with waiting for an invitation that never comes; then the period from Christmas to the jours gras sees continuous snow on the earth
Conception, birth, death in 'Madame Bovary'
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(NV, 231). Emma's disillusionment at the absence of another ball hence coincides with Berthe's conception during a period of days defined as all alike and bringing nothing, on 4/31 October in 1839/1840. Two versions of that conception occur in MB, the second at the time of the floral annunciation before the move to Yonville. Since the plans say Berthe was conceived at the beginning of October a year after the ball and is born in June (NV, 63), and since Charles estimates an early June birth (NV, 264), the biological gestation period is both eight and nine months and the floral conception coincides with the birth itself. The floral annunciation falls on the 2J March, which is also 4 April through the lavatio, but the calendar change makes 4 April coincide with 25 March and the Constantinople Era makes it coincide with 24 March and 4 September, which explains the eight-month gestation period through a coincidence of 4 October/September. Hence, Berthe's conception coincides with Eugene Arnoux's at SaintCloud at the time of St Joseph's flowering staff and of the 25 March Annunciation. The six-month displacement from 4 October to 4 April makes Berthe's conception on 1712J February/ March/4 April 1841, the anniversary of Heloi'se's death, coincide with her birth on Sunday 4 April/July 1841. If Charles began practising in Tostes on / November 1834, then that beginning point is equivalent to 5/22 October 1834 and 31 March 1835, so that Charles's four years in Tostes bring us to 31 March 1839141 at the moment just before the consultation with Lariviere (NV, 236). Following Lariviere's diagnosis of a 'maladie nerveuse' for what is in fact a mid-term pregnancy, Charles decides to leave Vers le printemps' if Emma's condition doesn't improve (NV, 237). That departure then occurs in May/ aux fetes de Pasques/ apres Pasques (NV, 237) or March (1, 597).
Before this departure, Yanoda/Adonay has decamped from Yonville and Emma has pricked her fingers on her wedding/ ball bouquet (NV, 237). The time of the arrival in Yonville is related to the Lyon floods of November 1840 (Fortescue, 97) through Homais's allusion (1, 599). Though the Bovarys left Tostes in March (1, 597), the arrival is described as occurring in the first days of
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April (G-M, 17), 'vers le mois d'avriP (JW, 27), during April weather (JW, 62), and as one year before Leon's departure from Yonville (JW, 64). Darkness comes at 6 p.m., a time guaranteed by Binet's 'exactitude' (1, 599), so the time must be February as well. In the JW, the occupants of the billiardroom are associated with the numbers 15 and 3; in the DV with 15 and 8 (1, 599), suggesting a IJ February/March/August coincidence such as occurs in ESi and Salammbo. 5 August is la saint Ton (Nicolas, 166), and 5/15 August is the date of the Cornices the following year, besides being the Fete-Napoleon indicated by the reference to the 'moyens' the blue-coated Binet has because of his political party (1, 600). Leon leaves Yonville on 7 April/July, so an arrival on that date would explain the 'blondes pieces de ble' of the narrator's present-tense description (1, 597). At the time of Emma's wedding and funeral, the wheat is green, and the JW makes the point that the distinction between the colour of the herbage and labour sides of the river disappears in spring when all is a 'verdure egale' (JW 238). Yonville is also described as a grey mantle with a green collar trimmed with the river's silver (JW, 238), which suggests a time when the fields are empty; yet Emma complains that nothing is more stupid than these great fields of wheat and the pastures full of cattle (JW, 254). One of the reasons for Charles's enigmatic statement that yesterday is five months ago concerns the fact that, unlike the Celts whose year was divided by the return of the herd for winter quartering at Samhain and the release of the herd to the pastures for spring grazing at Walpurgisnacht I Beltane (Belmont, 67), the Yonvillais divide the year according to a / April/1 November division, as is indicated by Bournisien's reference to the swollen cow of / April 1842 during Emma's visit (1, 612). This is also the seasonal division in Eugenie Grandees Saumur, where the stove is lit between / November and 31 March (Comedie humaine 111, 1041).
Cows in the pastures mean a date after 31 March; cowless pastures indicate a time after the return of the herd on 31 October/1 November. Green wheatfields mean a time in late March or early April, and blonde wheatfields mean a summer period ending with the harvest during the latter period of
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August, as was indicated by Charles's post-harvest visit to Les Bertaux on 31 August. The 'deux regions de physionomie distincte' (1, 597) indicate that the time of the arrival in Yonville must be the 7 April AND July of Leon's departure, and the Cain/Abel distinction emphasised by the narrator's description indicates another dimension of the 5 August of la saint-Ton: 5 August is also la saint-Abel, so the town which persists in remaining on the pastoral side when progress dictates a move toward the agricultural continues an ancient conflict. Because of the 21 March/1 April/1 September coincidence
emphasised at this time through Lheureux's allusion to a dog's return from Constantinople (1, 601), the 7 April/July is also 7 September, the point after harvest which reveals the grey colour of the earth/mantle (NV, 238), so the time of arrival on the eve of a Wednesday market day in 1841 is a Tuesday 23/30 March/y April, which is Monday in the NV through a Tuesday market day (XV, 263). Homais notices the post-mid-term pregnancy of the tartanclad Emma on this 23/30 March 1841, which anticipates the dismissal of the tartan-clad Clemence Daviou on 23/30 March 1847 m E$u (n> 72)- A few weeks previously, on 14/24 March/1/ 4 April, Lariviere diagnosed Emma's condition as a 'maladie nerveuse' requiring a change of air, so it is the thrice-consulted 'maitre' whose name is a synonym of Achille (Frame, 1222) who delivers Emma up to her fate in a Yonville-l'Abbaye in which the place of the father (abba) or Abbaye is missing and from which Yanoda/Adonay has absconded. Both Yanoda and Lariviere are examples of the deus absconditus who has abandoned his creation. As is the case with the conception of Berthe, with which it is linked through Homais's diagnosis, the arrival at Yonville is difficult to date not because of an insufficiency of temporal indices but because of a superfluity. Ovid places the swallow's return to Rome as harbinger of spring on 25 February (Fasti, 119), and a popular French rhyme associates the swallows' return with the Annunciation (Montreynaud, 202). The Hivert-driven Hirondelle is an expression of the transition from hiver to the season called Ver' or spring, which brings a greening of the
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fields betokened by the ending of Hiverfs name. Hence, the date is 2j February /March 1841, date of the disembarkation from the Aimable-Constance in ESi. On the other hand, the presence of Artemise and Hippolyte at the Lion d'Or indicates the festivals of Diana and Hippolytus on 13 August and 23 December in another temporal coincidence associated with the name Artemise in ESi. The spring equinox is one of the favoured dates for the Creation, and the variously defined moments of the winterspring transition are always nefasti: 'Le passage de l'hiver au printemps provoque une rupture par laquelle le monde s'entrouvre et laisse echapper les ames des morts' (Attali, 24). Only a combination of the February/March/April relationship established by the lavatioIlustratio and that of March/April! September associated with the Era of Constantinople will explain how Mme Bovary mere can have visited during Lent in 1840/ 1841 when that visit was followed by Theodore Rouault's in commemoration of his 21 February cure after forty-six days. Because the turkey will later be sent on a 31 March which repeats the timing of his payment of his account, the coincidence of 21/31 February/March is indicated. Many of the difficulties in locating the date of Berthe's birth relate also to those of the departure of Leon. In both cases, conflicting seasonal indices are given for a single day, but, since Berthe was born on Sunday 4 April/July 1841, and since Leon left Yonville on Thursday 7 April/July 1842, the comparisons between the two events are the basis for further multiplications of time. Berthe is born on a Sunday morning Vers six heures', as the sun is rising (1, 604). The plans say that Berthe is born in the month of June, having been conceived at the beginning of October a year after the ball at La Vaubyessard (JVF, 63). Charles had estimated a birth 'dans les premiers jours du mois de juin' (NV, 264), but, unfortunately, as Bovet (p. 6) has indicated, the time of sunrise fits April rather than June or July, yet July is required by the syntagmatic axis of progression in the story in view of the seasonal factors in the trip to the nurse's house. 4 July, besides being la sainte-Berthe (AF, 209), is nine months after the anniversary of the ball, and both 4 April and 4th July were Sundays in 1841. Moreover, the floral annuncia-
Conception, birth, death in 'Madame Bovary3 tion which took place before the move from Tostes occurred on a 27 March which was also a 4 April by means of the dates of the lavatio, so Berthe's floral conception coincides with her birth, a coincidence which is multiplied by virtue of the fact that a 4 April birth implies a 4 July (human) conception. 4 April 1841 was Palm Sunday (JJB, 140, 144). Similar difficulties with the timing of Leon's departure from Yonville are solved if that departure occurs on Thursday 7 April AMD 7 July 1842. The weather patterns for that event were prepared at the time of the July storm (NV, 196—7), but the pink acacia flowers which fall as the raindrops splash the green leaves of the poplars at the time of Leon's departure signal a coincidence of spring and summer which is reinforced by the text: the plans say that Leon left one year after Emma's arrival in Yonville (NV, 63) and that Emma arrived in the first days of April (G-M, 17). Emma will remember a spring farewell when she next sees Leon at the Opera (NV, 474). However, the plans also refer to a 'pluie d'ete' (NV, 72), and Emma notices the nasturtium-covered arbour the next day (NV, 320). Raindrops splash the green leaves, yet the poplars were described as leafless during Emma's / April 1842 visit to Bournisien (NV, 300). Leon's mother's reference to a period of six weeks before the August holidays (NV, 313) is further indication that the time is both April and July, as is Berthe's windmill, probably a birthday/name-day present. The result of this multiplication of time is authorial irony at the expense of the heroine: the black cloud which darkens Yonville and Emma's life on the day after Leon's departure is a reference to the total solar eclipse of 8 July 1842 (AF, 213), but it is a sign of authorial self-mockery as well. Alfred Le Poittevin was married on 6 July 1846 (1, 12) and buried on 6 April 1848 (Ci, 493ff.), so the irony at the experience of a sense of loss is shared by the writer and the character. 7 July and 17 February were the alternative dates for Romulus' death (Fasti, 91; Frazer, 498) commemorated in the saints' calendar on 6 July (AF, 211). 7 July as the loss of a Leon is also the loss of two Napoleons: 7 July I8IJ was the end of Napoleon II's 'on paper' reign that lasted fifteen days (Turnbull, 267); on 7 July 1821, Les Debats was the
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first newspaper to announce Napoleon Bonaparte's death to France. When Leon leaves Yonville, Napoleon Homais is 'attendri' {NV, 314), and darkness begins to descend as Leon says goodbye to Emma on the anniversary of the historical date of the Crucifixion on 7 April 30 A.D. (AF, 116). The following day, everything around Emma is 'enveloppe par une atmosphere noire' which corresponds to £le sentiment nouveau d'une immense desertion', £et comme un soleil doux qui s'est abaisse dans les flots' (NV, 319). ESi warned the reader that the sacred must survive the test of ridicule (1, 358): something real is lost on the day Leon goes away. Berthe's name is chosen two weeks after her birth {NV, 266), and if it is odd that, after perusing the calendar from one end to the other, Emma doesn't notice that her daughter was born on la sainte-Berthe, it is even more strange that Emma should be unaware whether or not the six weeks of the Virgin were completed at the time of the trip to the nurse's house. In view of the comment in TSA to the effect that the tree of Eden with its twelve red fruits was woman's body, and of Ovid's statement that the original, ten-month Roman year was based on the gestation period {Fasti, 129), it is odd that Emma doesn't consult her own body to see if the six weeks on which the Purification is based have elapsed. The trip to Mere Rollet's occurs on 14/24 August which equals 14/24 February, and 14 February was the
original date of the Purification and of la Chandeleur (MW, 66), through the church's effort to replace the Lupercalia with a Christian festival. On the night of Emma's death, when Bournisien places a candle in her hands, an earlier version added the comment 'jour de la Chandeleur' {NV, 612), indicating the coincidence of 14/24 February/March 1846 already established in ESi. Berthe's name is chosen, then, on 18 April/June/July 1841, and the christening occurs on 23 April/June/July 1841. The Bovary parents leave Yonville a month later, on 23 May/July/ August 1841, the day before Emma visits Mere Rollet. 18 April is St George's Day in the Coptic calendar (G, 111, 324); in the Roman calendar, the same dies natalis occurs on 23 April (AF, 132). The name of the son Emma wanted is inscribed cryptically
Conception, birth, death in 'Madame Bovary' in the text, and Berthe's baptism on 23 July occurs on the second Festival of the Magi for the year (AF, 228), 310 years after Louis de Breze death (1 656). The situation of the Cornices Agricoles on 5/15 August 1842 is established by several coincidences. 5 August, la saint-Ton, is the date of Yonville's eponym, and / j August is la saint-Napoleon and the Assumption, the double source of the blue coat/cloak in Flaubert's work. The notion of an Assumption is derived from the classical apotheosis of the Hero and the imagery of his triumph (MW, 91), and the blue cloak Napoleon shares with the Virgin points to the intersection of history and myth in figures whose lives seem to unite yesterday with all time. A cryptic reference to the Assumption is made by means of Emma's 'petit medaillon d'or sur lequel la Sainte Vierge etait empreinte' and Rodolphe's approbation of 'ce culte rendu a une femme' (NV, 361) on the 5/15 August of the Cornices. The description of the Cornices begins with the vision of'une tente' and the passing to and fro of 'les habits bleus et les capotes grises' (NV, 336). The Emperor's predilection for interior decors which resembled the camp setting has been transferred from Malmaison to the 'calicot tricolore' of Yonville (NV, 3682), and his famous capote grise alternates with the blue coat of the Napoleonic warrior, here represented by Binet and his fifteen firemen (NV, 336) and by Felicite's lover, Theodore, who wears 'un vieil habit bleu a son maitre ... tout garni de boutons d'or' (NV, 349). Mme Lefrancois is particularly critical of 'leur baraque de toile' and has been resentful of the event 'depuis quinze jours', hence since 22 July/1 August 1842 (NV, 338). Hippolyte's function as a sacrificial victim is foreshadowed at this time with his wearing of the lid of the Lion d'Or's oat chest (NV, 338) in the presence of Artemise, a reflection of the fact that Flaubert had considered i/j/12 August as possible dates for the Cornices (NV, 80). As Flaubert's notes further indicate, 12 August is la sainteClaire, the saint who cures 'les maux d'yeux' (NV, 113). It is also the eve of la saint-Hippolyte on the date of the festival of Diana, and the Assumption on / j August is thought to be a displaced version of Diana's festival of slaves, as is indicated by a tradition
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that the Virgin Mary died on IJ August and ascended body and soul on / j August. Mere Lefrangois's resentment of la toile/tente extends to the Tellier who is afabricant de toiles (AL, 563): she prophesies his downfall for 'cette semaine', 'avant huit jours', hence before 12/22 August (NV, 340). That Lheureux's saisie doesn't occur 'definitivement' until / November 184.2/1843 (NV, 451) indicates another coincidence of dates involving / November. Mme Lefrangois goes on to define Lheureux's modus operandi in a manner which will have further implications for the 22 August date: '[il] lui lachait toujours la corde jusqu'a ce qu'il l'ait resserree tout a fait' (NV, 341). When the bald, toupet-clad Bonapartist Lieuvain appears with a 'teint jaunatre' (NV, 350), the Napoleonic theme gains a momentum which continues with the bald Binet blinded by his helmet to the extent that his vision extends only to 'quinze pas, limite des horizons militaires' (NV, 351)Lieuvain's invocation of the 'lois de Moi'se' (NV, 362s) suggests a doubling of / j May/August which repeats that of the trip to Mere RoUet's house occasioned by the earlier doubling of April and July, since / j May is the day on which Lex Moysi data est (Nicolas, 103). Homais's newspaper article of y/iy May/ August 1842 defines the bald old men who attended the Cornices as the 'debris des immortelles phalanges qui ont visite toutes les capitales de l'Europe' (NV, 370-1), and chides the clergy for an absence which is understandable on the date of the Assumption which is also 5 May/13 August, the dates of Napoleon Bonaparte's birth and death. Rodolphe's strategy after the Cornices is derived from Napoleon Bonaparte, as is indicated by Rodolphe's resolution: 'laissons se murir la poire, elle tombera d'elle-meme' (NV, 372). This resolve carries him to the decision to go hunting on 12/22 August, and on 22 August iygg Napoleon abandoned the French army in Egypt because, in a phrase he has made famous, the pear was ripe (Hudson, 94). The strategy is comparable to Lheureux's tactic of giving his victims enough rope to hang themselves, and consists in making provocative moves then withdrawing to await the inevitable course of human weakness. The coincidence that, on 21 February 1848, Deslauriers will tell
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Frederic that 'La poire est mure' (11, 109) in relation to a rendezvous for the following day of Revolution indicates that the pear of 22 February/August applies as much to a Bonapartist strategy as to an Orleanist king with a pear-shaped head. After a fortnight's hunting, on 26 August/5 September 1842, Rodolphe decides that 'II est trop tard maintenant' (NV, 372), but decides to make Emma wait even longer. The coincidence with the second anniversary of Elisa Judee's marriage to Maurice Schlesinger on 5 September 1840 may explain the observation of tardiness which will recur when Lheureux has finally destroyed Emma. Rodolphe's return on 16/26 September is marked by false threats to leave and promises that this is the last time he will importune Emma (JW, 373); and the gap between this return and the ride in the forest is occasioned by the necessary purchase of Emma's amazone. The mystery of how the moment, situated in the 'premiers jours d'octobre', of the forest ride can also be the day after Rodolphe's return (jVF, 378) is solved by the parallel episode in ESi, when the amazone-clad Emilie witnesses the aftermath of Henry's humiliating drenching after a fall from his horse in the Bois de Boulogne on 77/27 March 1840. The lavatio celebrated on 27 March during the Roman Empire occurred on 4 April under the Republic. Emma's amazone is situated in the gap between 27 September and 4 October, equivalent dates. Emma's first ride in the forest with Rodolphe therefore occurs on a 4 October 1842 which is also a 77/27 September, the day after Rodolphe's return following the six weeks he allowed to elapse between the Cornices of 5/75 August 1842 and his return on 16/26 September. Because of the 25 September/5/15 October
coincidence caused by calendar changes, the return to the forest on the day following the baisade has the effect of making Rodolphe's seduction of Emma occur on 24/27 September/4 October, during the Thesmophoria commemorating the rape of Persephone. Rodolphe's return and seduction of Emma also occur on the third anniversary of the ball at La Vaubyessard in the JVT7, where that event was pinned specifically to 3-4 October 1838 by the reference to moonrise during the trip home. Through the six-month displacement from April to October,
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Flaubert decks Emma's seduction with the trappings of the Cybele—Attis cult: the pine trunk, violets and flowering heather which coincide with Frederic Moreau's defloration in the Rue Tronchet in £$11 (11, 108) are present on this 24 September/4 October which anticipates Matho's 24 September seduction of Salammbo in the tent, and the Iacchic cry which Emma hears after her self-abandonment points to the same coincidence of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Thesmophoria as is indicated during the 4 April sacrifice to Moloch (1, 779, 781). It is the coincidence of the autumn equinox with the early October point which makes these festivals coincide. The progression^/rom late March/September into early April/ October is one of the most
frequent transitions in the novel. When Rodolphe claims, on the day before 4 October, hence 23/26 September, that 'madame Bovary' is cle nom d'un autre', he is quite correct, and the coincidence that Rodolphe and Charles Bovary will last meet on 23 September 184J, eve of Pepin's and Charles's deaths, suggests that the dates involving the calendar change are in operation here. Hence, Charles dies on the fifth anniversary of Emma's first 'fall', on a date which combines the Cybele-Attis violets and tree trunk on the Day of Blood, 24 March, with the commemoration of Persephone's rape at the I-J October Thesmophoria. The myth of Demeter Chloe, which combines a motherdaughter figure in one, is one of the most important motifs in MB, and its combination with the folkloric figure of Le Petit Chaperon rouge is indicated here by Emma's reaction to Rodolphe's self-revelation as the forest wolf (1, 628), a motif whose Napoleonic dimensions will be hinted at in the next important scene when Emma encounters Binet on what she defines as a return from the nurse's house. In a way, La Huchette is the grandmother's house with its bread bin, as well as being an allusion to the Rue de la Huchette home of Napoleon Bonaparte at the time of the 13 vendemiaire Day of the Sections and of the 'seduction' ofJosephine (Cronin, 82; Castelot, 47). The second encounter with the wolf in the form of the duckhunting Binet 'vers la fin de decembre' {NV, 388) occurs on 29 December 1842, as is indicated by the sound of Emma's name in
Conception, birth, death in 'Madame Bovary' the river: Emma's name day is 29 June (AF, 202), and the leafy poplars swaying over her head at a time of year when the poplars should be leafless (Bovet, 36) is the signal of this coincidence o{ 2g June/ December. The coincidence of the date of the end of Empire with this moment of adulterous anguish points to the model for that anguish, and to Lheureux's attempted trapping of Emma on the following 2g June when he threatens to ask Charles for the whip already presented to Rodolphe. This end of December period is one of great danger in Flaubert's fictions. The 31 December 1843 of the night at Vernon has cast a sinister glow that will make Flaubert misdefine the date of the trial of MB in a later edition of the novel. Since the pre-Julian Roman months ended on 2g December and 2g January, Flaubert had a precedent for substituting 31 January for the trial's opening on 2g January 1857 (11, 724); and the equivalence of December and January, guaranteed by Bede, is one of Flaubert's favourite coincidences. On this date of the anguish which follows the fear of detection of adultery, Emma claims that Berthe has been home for a year when, in fact, she had Berthe brought home after the 20-1 February 1842 realisation of Leon's love for her. Rouault's turkey and letter arrive on / April 1843, the beginning of spring according to the farmer's, and Bournisien's, year. This capacity of the church to wed religious time to the seasonal indices which regulate many aspects of the vocational year is indicated by Bournisien's introduction to the novel on the evening of the arrival in Yonville, when he is portrayed as helping to bring in the hay, and by his reference to the swollen cow on / April 1842, which indicates that all professions and occupations are dependent on seasonal factors. The / April 1843 turkey reasserts the timing of Rouault's first payment of his account on 31 March 1836, six weeks after Heloise's death, and its arrival in Yonville on the following day is evidence to Emma of a paternal love that leads her to a feeling of maternal love for Berthe (JVF, 309), and to six weeks of sulking with Rodolphe. That six-week period contains both the clubfoot operation and the thigh amputation, and it is on
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the date of the latter, 12/13 May 1843, that Emma and Rodolphe are reconciled 'depuis six semaines qu'ils se boudaient' (NV, 413). The coincidence of 12 and 13, which refers to the novelist's birth, is reflected in the church calendar as well: Voragine gives 12 May as the original All Saints' Day, before it was moved to / November (p. 642); by the nineteenth century, the original date of All Saints' Day was marked on 13 May (Nicolas, 120).
12 May is la saint-Achille, a festival which was celebrated in the Flaubert household every year on the nearest Sunday to its occurrence (Ci, 161, 927), as Caroline's letter to her brother of 13 May 1843 indicates. The Achille celebrated on 12 May was a eunuch who warned his mistress that, after marriage, men 'often prefer the serving maid to the mistress' (Voragine, 282), and the coincidence of the thigh infection which killed AchilleCleophas Flaubert and a thigh amputation on la saint-Achille suggests an autobiographical association which defines the father as an incestuously mythical figure who takes his sexual partners from beneath the familial roof, as Bovary pere will later do (NV, 457), and as Emma will dream of doing with Leon (NV, 5i9? 537)When Emma sees Rodolphe coming towards her house on the night of the reconciliation, she utters a scream in the NV (NV, 413), and she and Rodolphe conduct their tryst at La Huchette, as is indicated by their moonlight return through the prairie with its odour of 'foins coupes' (NV, 414), which reminds the reader of the May/August equivalence established by the April/July coincidence of Berthe's birth and Leon's departure. The same odour at the Cornices (NV, 359) on 5/13 May/August 1842 points to the date 12/13 May/August 1843 a s t n e date of the thigh amputation on the date, 13 August, of the festival of Artemise/Diane and la saint-Hippolyte (AF, 250). Emma's scream and the La Huchette venue are indications of a mystery which is never explained in MB: the question why Rodolphe was approaching Emma's house after a six-week sulking period in 'leur pauvre amour interrompu' (NV, 413). The answer is afforded by la saint-Achille: Rodolphe has been conducting an affair with Felicite during that period and will
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continue to do so, as the moment of Samhain, 31 October-i November, will show when it recurs twice more in 1843. The 'cover story' for this liaison is afforded by Theodore's courting of Felicite (1, 638); but Theodore was the original name for Rodolphe in the plans (NV, 5), and the coincidence that there was a contemporary of Flaubert, Gustave-Rodolphe Boulanger (1824-83), who was a painter of classical and oriental subjects (Goncourts, iv, 1050), suggests a more personal level of involvement in adultery in the year 1843. Flaubert's borrowing of the names of contemporaries for the names of characters will reach a climax in BeP\ but, for the moment, the identification with an opportunistic and heartless seducer is worth noting, especially since the clubfoot operation of Tuesday 11/21 April/ July 1843 coincides with the death of Hippolyte Colet on 21 April I8JI{CI, 1149). Lheureux appears on 26 June 1843 with the whip Emma has ordered as a gift for Rodolphe. Lheureux's reintroduction into the Bovary household has been facilitated by the unacknowledged guilt which makes Emma and Charles want to give Hippolyte a wooden leg, and Lheureux's pressing demand for the money for the whip and other purchases on 27 June 1843 seems premature, except in view of the impending end of the quarter and his realisation that repressed guilt makes his victims both generous and blind to the details of financial arrangements. On 2g June 1843, Lheureux begins blackmailing Emma with his threat to ask Charles for the whip which has been given to Rodolphe. Emma is saved by Derozerays's fifteen napoleons of the same day (1, 638), and this evocation of the end of the Hundred Days on 29 June 1815 shows that one person's misery is another's gain. When the usurer attempts to close the trap by inveigling Emma into an arrangement on 2 July 1843, Emma is able to pay the 270-franc debt. Among the gifts for which Emma has become indebted to Lheureux is a porte-cigarettes resembling the porte-cigares she has had in her possession 'depuis trois ans bientot' (NV, 422). This temporal signpost, omitted from the definitive version, signals the superimposition of 1842 on 1843 f° r t n e purposes of the failed elopement in the jVFand
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the coincidence of 2 April/July and 2 October in Flaubert's time scheme. The 3/5 October 1837/i8jg of the cigar-case in the year of Emma's marriage occurred four years ago, but time is being multiplied once again, and the 2 July/ October 1842/3 of Emma's payment of Lheureux occurs on the day before the coincidence of 3 and 30 October occasioned by Maurice Schlesinger's temporal lie. Therefore, it is not surprising that the next date in unfolding of the novel is the 31 October of Felicite's rendezvous with her forty-year-old lover, interrupted by Mme Bovary mere. Charles's mother's presence in her son's household is the result of an 'epouvantable scene avec son mari' (1, 639); later, the cause of that quarrel will be revealed in Bovary Senior's 'commerce clandestin' (NV, 457) with a maid he has hired for the marital home, and with whom he is conducting an affair. Mme Bovary mere is therefore in a position to know what she is talking about when she complains to Emma of Felicite's bluecoated lover who is visiting the house at 11 p.m., one hour after Rodolphe's usual arrival time for his trysts with Emma (NV, 425). The NVmakes it clear that, at this time, the affair between Emma and Rodolphe is being conducted in the course of the resumed riding lessons, and the plans show that Rodolphe was associated with the ages of 37, 36 and 34 (NV, 334), so the estimate of the age of forty by a woman who is not subject to the vanity lies of Emma and Rodolphe on this occasion deserves credence. Mme Bovary mere complains of this interrupted tryst to Emma the following day, / November 1842/3, and the fact that it is a market day on which the return of the herd for winter quartering is announced by a horn blast (NV, 426-7) establishes the date as Wednesday 31 October 1842/1 November 1843.
Emma's complaint that she has been patient for three years and suffered for ten months (NV, 427) is censored in the DV, where it becomes a complaint of four years of patience (1, 640). In either case, the patience has lasted since / November 1839, the exact date of the death of Elisa Foucault's first husband, Jacques-Emile Judee (G-G, 78), and the ten months of suffering began on the exact date of Adolphe Schlesinger's birth on / January 1842. The Gustave/Rodolphe who accuses himself of being a heartless and adulterous seducer in the cryptic temporal
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language of his 'fictions' has just accused himself of a great deal more, and that 'confession' has sent the narration reeling backwards to the dates earlier associated with / November. 31 March and 12/13 May. If 31 March equals / November, then the elopement decision occurs also on 30/31 March/1 April 1842/3 in the two versions of MB. Hence, Charles's dreams of future happiness on what the plans refer to repeatedly as the 'nuit conjugale' (NV, 94 etc.) occur on the 24 March/1 April of his wedding anniversary, after Emma's sudden change of heart occasioned by the elopement decision. By the temporal coincidence at that time, the length of Emma's patience dates from the marriage on 31 March/1 April i83g, and her suffering from the night of anguish after her meeting with Binet, here defined as occurring on 31 December/1 January, time of the saint-Sylvestre and crise nerveuse two years later
as 1843 became 1844. An adulterous relationship detected unawares and a temporal lie about a child are the common factors in these dates. After the description of the wedding anniversary night, the narration refers, via the pluperfect, to Emma's ordering of her travelling gear from Lheureux on what appears to be the day of the night of dreaming, / April/July 1842/3. Through that time loop, the statement that the elopement date was originally scheduled for 'le mois prochain' makes the departure time August and December 1842/3, but the coincidence with 12/13 May makes that original departure date occur also in July. Emma may have overlooked Mme Bovary mere\ warnings about life and literature, but their implications are registered in Emma's unconscious, as subsequent reactions will show. Because of the time loop from / November to 31 March, and the leap forward occasioned by the coincidence of / April and / July, Rodolphe's delaying tactics, which coincide with the avoidance of talking about a child (1, 641), take the narration to 15 July, Caroline-Josephine's birthday, to 22 July and 5 August, then to the end of August and the fixing of the date at Monday 4 September 1843 m the DV, and Monday 12 September 1842 in the NV.
In any year, September and December have the same daydate correlation, so the doubling which makes the Saturday
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evening of the last rendezvous Saturday 2 SeptemberI December 1843 and g/10 September/December 1843/1842 produces a coincidence
of changes from the Julian to the Gregorian calendars which occurred on 23 August/2 September, 3/14 September and 10/20
December. When, at midnight, Emma says 'demain!', that moment is one of multiple definitions of what the date is. There are several seasonal indications of the multiplication of dates: the seringas which perfume the air belong in June, as Bovet has indicated (p. 36); the phrase 'Depuis le commencement de 1'ete' (NV, 441) suggests that we are still in summer; the wheatfields Emma sees from the attic window would be empty after the harvest towards the end of August according to the period of Charles's courtship (NV, 165-6), and the 'grands coups de belier' point to a coincidence with the spring equinox. Charles's forty-three-day attendance on Emma takes us to 16 October 1843 in the Z)F, so Charles's persistent presence bridges the gap between the calendar change 0(3/14 September 1752 and that of J / / J October 1582. Charles saves Emma from becoming lost in lost time. Emma's relapse on 31 October/1 November is dated by the fires of dead leaves which always signal the temporal leap associated with the 3/30 October coincidence which made the 5 Octoberfindingof the porte-cigares coincide with the Samhain fires of 31 October/1 November. While it would seem that Emma's relapse is attributed solely to her entry into the tonnelle she shared with Rodolphe, time is the unconscious factor which makes Emma's reaction even more severe than that occasioned by Rodolphe's abandonment. The moment of the blue-coated lover has been repeated, and Emma's unconscious has registered the import of Mme Bovary mere's anecdote. On that same / November of Emma's relapse, defined as the most serious point of her illness, Charles agrees to sign for the 180 francs' worth of travelling gear and then borrows 1000 francs from Lheureux at whatever interest rate Lheureux should stipulate. The contradiction over this first 'arrangement' is of crucial importance in the Bovary downfall, and it is Charles who walks into Lheureux's trap, beginning the slide. Lheureux confines the interest rate to 6%, but swindles Charles using numbers. First, though the date of borrowing is / November
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and the one-year loan requested by Charles is repayable on / November the following year in the NV(p. 451), by the time of the definitive version the repayment date has become / September (1, 646). This reflects the calendar's own propensity to tell time lies, for the designation '()bre' lends itself to misinterpretation, and a swindler such as Lheureux must always have an excuse ready in case he is ever challenged. At 6% interest, Charles should owe 1060 francs on / November 1844, but Lheureux has charged commission on the loan, and he defines this commission as 'un quart'. It would be expected that this quarter would refer to one quarter of six per cent, which would make the amount of repayment in a year 1075 francs, not 1070 francs, as Bopp has remarked (p. 329). The problem with Bopp's assertion — that the smaller amount enables us to fix the late September date on which the money was borrowed - is that the loan was for exactly 'douze mois' (1, 646) as requested by Charles and repeated by Lheureux, and that, as the NV shows, the / September date is already a swindle. The only solution which fits Lheureux's paradoxical act of cheating Charles out of two months' interest, then undercharging him on the commission, is if there was a convention that commission should be charged at a marginal rate, such as |%, rather than a quarter of the interest rate itself. The mystery of why Lheureux should forgo even five francs is solved only if he is 'testing the water' with regard to the charging of commission itself, and as to its amount in the second instance. At the time of the sale of the Barneville property, Lheureux will claim that 'Langlois' has charged Emma 10% commission on 2000 francs, so that Emma receives 1800 francs instead of 2000 (1, 667). Bopp joins the rest of the critics who see in Flaubert's confession that the financial side of his novel's combinaisons gave him an inordinate amount of trouble a sign of financial incompetence in the novel's 'realism'; but Flaubert doesn't get his numbers wrong except by design, and his consultations with financial experts indicate a determination to understand how people are inveigled into debt. In the NV, 1842 is doubled and superimposed on 1843 by the designation of the elopement date as Monday 12 September 1842
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(JVF, 433). Since the year is 'really' 1843, it follows that the date in that year would be Monday 11 September 1843. However, 1843 1S also equal to 1841, and the Monday 13 September of that year repeats the elopement of Henry and Emilie on 13/23 March/ September 1841, when it was claimed that Tautomne a parfois des lueurs de printemps' (1, 330). That the 1841 date is intentional is indicated by an alternative '23 septembre' in the plans (G-M, 45): 23 September is Elisa Foucault's birthday (G-G, 78). Emma's last night with Rodolphe occurs, then, on Saturday 10 September 1842/g September 1843/11 September 1841, but the dou-
bling of September and December, suggested by their day-date correlation and by the time loop, brings about further coincidences: Monday 12 December 1842 was Flaubert's official majority, so the fuite manquee is a failed manhood test. However, the most important message encoded by the hidden temporal dimensions of the years 1841 and 1843 is the fact that Emma's crise nerveuse is made to coincide with Gustave Flaubert's on 1 January 1844. When Emma says £demain!' at midnight of the evening which was g September/December 1843, that moment is 10/20 December 1843 through the calendar introduction of 10/20 December 1582, so the moment of Emma's temptation to suicide on a 12/22 December 1841 occurs on a date which is equivalent to / January 1842 through the calendar change of 22 December/1 January. Emma's attack occurs on Adolphe Schlesinger's date of birth and two years before the crise de Pont-VEveque.
Since that moment of disappointment also occurs on New Year's Eve of 1843, the coincidence of contiguous days has made the saint-Sylvestre at Vernon part of the scheme, so Emma's glimpse of a man donning a redingote in her bedroom just before she enters the attic hints at the presence of another adulterous dimension in view of Charles' subsequent statement that he has just returned from the Cafe Franqais (JW, 445). Flaubert's rendition of his own crise is conveyed by Homais's reference to Morel's greyhound's Veritables attaques d'epilepsie' (JVF, 448), and the adulterous component of Emma's crisis is echoed by a similarity of narration in ESi and the earlier version of MB.
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Since Morel is Emilie's former lover and Morel is the name associated with Gustave's stroke through Morel's levrier, it follows that the Gustave/Morel who will later call a version of himself by the name Moreau is implicated in adultery committed under a marital roof, an adultery which is almost detected by a husband whose name may have been appropriated along with his wife. New Year's Eve is la saint-Flobert as well as la saintSylvestre (Nicolas, 140), so the name which is synonymous with Schlesinger (ECS, 32), Sylvestre, is celebrated at the same time as the name Flaubert.
At Bovet has indicated (p. 36), the syringas which perfume the last night belong in June, not September, and Emma's view of the wheatfields from the attic window would be impossible in September/December because of the late August harvest (NV, 166). The leafless poplars and 'grands coups de belier' (JW, 443) point to the winter solstice and spring equinox respectively, the wheatfields to the summer solstice and the ripe peach to the autumn equinox in this multi-dimensional moment. Nothing will restore the late-night full moon on any of the dates proposed unless there is a four-hour time drop which signals the time of the author's birth, for the full moon rises just after sunset, and although Rodolphe arrives earlier than his usual 10 p.m. time on the night of the last meeting, it is clear that the full moon appears 'a ras de terre' at a time which approaches midnight. From the literary discussion in Yonville on the eve of the trip to the opera to the dramatic incident of L'Amour ... conjugal, the literary emphasis in the Lucie episode indicates a repetition of the Notre-Da-me-de-Pa-ris episode of ij February/March/August
1841. The argument on the anniversary of Moliere's ij February death occurs twice in MB, and the dropping of a year in association with Leon's three-year absence from Yonville when he really left two years ago makes consecutive days coincide. The Thursday argument in Yonville occurs on a date which is 1843/1844/1845 thanks to the gaining of a year in the context of a two-year discrepancy. Hence, the discussion involving Charles, Homais, Binet and Bournisien on the subject of censorship, the excommunication of actors and the 'venin
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cache' of literary works occurs on / j August 1844, ij August 1843 and 14 August 1845.
Just as the episode of Frederic's inadvertent interruption of a scene primitive between Rosanette and the Jacques Arnoux compared to Hugo's 'Lui' occurs on a 20 August which repeats the farcical conception of Louis Napoleon by Napoleon, so the scene du fiacre occurs on the 20 August anniversary of the imaginary annunciation at Saint-Cloud in 1807, a comparison indicated by the violets without which Leon cannot enter the 'boite jaune' with its 'stores jaunes' symbolising the first emperor's complexion (NV, 498-9). The shared identity of Napoleon and Louis Napoleon, indicated by the allusion to 'Lui' used by the Parisian populace on 28 February 1848 to indicate its support for one who was both 'Lui' and 'Louis' (Corley, 54), comes to the fore in the scene which moves from the boudoir-cathedral with its parrot-nosed suisse to the yellow box cab which is a squashed version of the imperial boudoir-office-coach. Because the date of the fiacre episode is also 27 March through the doubling of March and February in ESi, the infernal imperial dash to consummate the marriage with Marie-Louise on 27 March 1810 (Turnbull, 52) is another element in the slapstick comedy of a chasse infemale which also coincides with the iy February Festival of Fools and Fornacalia in Rome (Fasti, 91-5). The coincidence with the Roman Festival of Ovens is indicated by the comparison of the cab's hot roof to 'le marbre d'un poele' (NV, 499) as the basis of an implied pun: fornication at the Fornacalia! Some background material on the first emperor's attitude to women is afforded by the discourse of the suisse which Leon finds so incongruous: by drawing attention to the Amboise bell which cracked 'au passage du roi Louis XVI' (NV, 492), the mercenary suisse in his plumed hat is drawing attention to the associations of the 10/20 August date, to the massacre of the Swiss Guard and suspension of the monarchy on 10 August 1792, to the atrocities committed on the bodies of those guards by the well-dressed ladies who so horrified the young Napoleon (Hudson, 36-7). 10 August is also one of the posited dates for the festival in honour of the recovery of Proserpine during which
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the incestuous conception of Adonis occurred (Frazer, m, 307— 10), as is indicated by the wide variety of flowers available in the market place from which Leon chooses his imperial emblems. The taboo on mentioning the father-daughter bond during that festival is relevant to Napoleon's status as stepfather and brother-in-law of Hortense, and the situation of the conception of Louis Napoleon at Saint-Cloud during the family reunion attending the wedding of Jerome on 17-23 August 1807 makes the fantasy conception all the more incestuous, as is indicated by the reference to a Sainte-Cecile painted by a Clodion in the beadle's discourse (JVV, 4931). This cryptic allusion to Napoleon's depucelage on la sainte-Cecile of 1787 is coupled with a reference to Clodion, a form of Cloud/Rouault.
The space between the Theatre des Arts (where Lucie is staged) and Rouen cathedral is that of Bouvard's lies during the journey to Chavignolles. Bouvard's alcohol-induced choice of the wrong coach brings him to Rouen when he meant to go to Caen, and his lie at the Theatre des Arts (to the effect that he has just retired from business and bought an estate in the neighbourhood) is the denial of an inheritance from his uncle/ godfather/natural father. The myth of Napoleonic conception makes this the very relationship between Louis Napoleon and Napoleon, so Bouvard's posture as a self-made man in a theatrical setting indicates an illegitimate inheritance. Leon cannot enter the cab without the violets he has bought for himself/Emma, and because he has run out of change owing to the mercenary overtures of the repetitious suisse, he gives his last five-franc piece to the boy who brings him the bouquet (NV, 498), just as Emma will give her last five-franc piece to the Blind Man whose body, compared twice to a 'tete guillotinee', clings tenaciously to the yellow Hirondelle. The beadle's reference to the passage of Louis XVI makes Leon think of the 'monarque decapite' (NV, 492), and both references to decapitation raise the question of legitimacy, especially since the Blind Man's first appearance on 5 December 184.4. occurs on the anniversary of the opening of Louis XVI's trial on 5 December 1792 and of Napoleon's desertion of the Grande Armee on 5 December 1812. The army that limped home leaderless from
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Moscow (and which is the subject of so many naive illusions in the minds of MB's characters) is here represented by a returned crusader whose tour of the capitals of Europe has left him enriched only by disease and blindness. Before Leon enters the cathedral, he thinks that the clock has stopped (NV, 489): the endless repetitions of the beadle's discourse in the NV indicate that it has indeed. It's the same old story all over again. As Leon enters the cathedral/boudoir, it seems to him a temple of which he is the deity awaiting the priestess of his cult; the beadle's reference to the comparability of the tower's height with the Great Pyramid's is a reminder that Napoleon's tomb is the second largest ever to house a man-god (NV, 491, 497). The scene dufiacrewas the first passage excised by the editors of the Revue de Paris. Its ferocity, even after the self-censorship exercised between the NV and the DV, is still striking. It is the combination of personal and Napoleonic mythology which has rendered the scene so monstrous. 10 February 1812 was the wedding day (and night) of Flaubert's parents: it is the anniversary at the basis of the experimental engenderings so acutely perceived by Sartre in relation to Quidquid volueris, where the prize for the bestial coupling was the cross of the Legion d'Honneur. The unholy blending of glory and sexuality is the object of Flaubert's savage satire, and the situation of the cabride at 8-10 February/August is evidence of his reaction to the perpetuation of the wedding anniversary through the births of Caroline on 8 February 1816, of Emile-Cleophas on 8 February 1818 and of Achille on g February 1813.
Several hints as to the multiplication of time are afforded by the Lucie and fiacre scenes. The parting in the Passage SaintHerbland at the end of the evening of 16 August 1844, which is about to become 75 August 1845 a s w e ^ through Leon's threeyear absence, encodes la saint-Herb land, 26 March (Nicolas, 137), in the text. The situation at the mid-August period is indicated by the coincidence that Lucie's creator, Walter Scott, and Napoleon Bonaparte were both born on 75 August (AF, 252), and that Bovary pere died on the night of a 'repas bonapartiste' (NV, 506). The question of how the night of 75/16118 August can be the anniversary of a departure which occurred on 7 April/July
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1842 is answered by the fact that 7 July is one of the dates of the death of Romulus. The other, iy February, is six months before the moment, after midnight, when Leon's departure is defined as occurring three years ago (1, 652), as well as being the anniversary of Heloise's death. The coincidence of contiguous days is suggested by the July dates which commemorate two Romuluses' deaths: la saint-Romulus is 6 July, and in this case, hagiography is direct plagiarism from mythology (Delaney, 499)Emma's passion and death are rendered with a wealth of symbolic detail which betokens mythical proportions: from the red sunrise on the steps of the Theatre des Arts on 20 March 1846 to Justin's farewell at the beginning of 27 March 1846, the narration of Emma's leavetaking is a multi-dimensional affair. Among the many contradictions of this narration are Lheureux's statement that he last saw Emma in his office on Saturday when their last meeting was on Friday; the suppressed references to 'la semaine de Pasques' and cle jour de la Chandeleur' (NV, 620, 612); Homais's complaint about Theodore's blue coat when all the coffin-bearers are wearing blue coats; the appearance of the symptoms of Gustave's crise nerveuse on 23 March 1846) the periods of two and three years associated with the Emma—Rodolphe liaison; and why the symptoms of Emma's illness should be those of mercury poisoning and not arsenical (Bart, 307). Although the days of the week don't fit the associations of the original Holy Week, the original fixed date of the Crucifixion on 25 March (Voragine, 125) enables us to establish the equivalence of 20 March with Palm Sunday, 25 March with the Crucifixion and the Hilaria for which it substituted and 2J March with the Resurrection and lavatio symbolising the cleansing of sexual sins (Frazer, in, 245). If the rites of Attis and Cybele are the basis of the hieros gamos which the Crucifixion consummates, then Emma dies on the night of the Day of Blood, of the Last Supper, of the failed wake in the Garden of Gethsemane and of the Judas kiss which sold a friend for thirty silver pieces. The Ancients' habit of waking through the solstices (Voragine, 50) is reflected by the Yonvillais' wake on
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the night of 23—4 March 1846 which suggests that the to-ing and fro-ing of the chart establishing equivalences between the calendar change, the lavatio and the Era of Constantinople has created an equivalence of 23 and 24 March which explains the wake through the equinoctial period; and this is supported by the note in the plans 'le 23 au matin elle fut reprise de vomissemens' (NV, 32). Because 23 and 24 March are also equal to 3 and 4 April, Emma's death is also that of Alfred Le Poittevin, defined by Flaubert as occurring at the stroke of midnight on 3-4 April 1848 (Ci,m). By far the most intriguing of all the contradictions surrounding Emma's death is the substitution of mercury poisoning for arsenical as the cause of Emma's death on the 24 March, which coincides with Flaubert's Palm Sunday description of the river journey with Mohammed on the Nile (11, 580). Both mercury and arsenic were contemporary 'cures' for syphilis, and Lariviere's observation that only cholera and arsenic can produce such speedy symptoms (NV, 608 *) suggests that it is anger and frustration which produce the self-destructive impulse. Bart claims that Flaubert mistook the symptoms through their proximity in the medical dictionary he was consulting, but the son of such a distinguished medical family could hardly mistake the symptoms of a drug he was using at the time of writing — especially when he compared the taste of poison to that of ink, the writer's own bodily fluid. Emma dies because she has absorbed the male or strong poison, and her creator's equation of literature and syphilis (Cn, 752) is an indication of an awareness that the disease was most often contracted through male homosexual encounters, as his visits to the Cairo hospital made plain (n, 565). Similarly, literature is an affair among men, and the ideology Emma has absorbed through her reading is a reflection of the unsatisfied male vanity of its authors in a post-Napoleonic age which has forgotten the price of glory. In death, Emma's complexion will become the 'peau jaunatre' (NV, 617) of Tellier's decline and of all of Flaubert's corpses who have returned to the Sacred Napoleonic Soil from which they have sprung; and the coincidence that her funeral should occur on a 26 March, which is
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also the 6 April date of the unconditional 1814 abdication which followed the failure of fraternity, is a sign that there are no heirs at all when friendship has been betrayed. The blue coats of Robespierre's Festival of the Supreme Being have become the symbol of a militaristic confraternity that abandons its Supreme Being when the going gets tough, and the relationships between males in an age which has witnessed the failure of fraternal solidarity are those of seduction and abandonment. That 24 March coincides with 14 February as well as with 4 April is indicated by the reference to the 'jour de la Chandeleur' symbolised by the candle Bournisien places in Emma's hands during the last rites. The Presentation first celebrated on 14 February (MW, 66) was a substitution for the Lupercalia before being transferred to 2 February in order to oust a festival commemorating Persephone's rape by Hades/Pluto and in honour of the purification associated with Juno Februata (Voragine, 151); but the church left its mark on the period of the Lupercalia by placing la saint-Adolphe on the eve of its celebration. 14 February 1846 was the date of yet another failed Polish uprising, and of Victor Hugo's maiden speech to the Peers on the third anniversary of his daughter Leopoldine's marriage to Charles Vacquerie. Since Hugo's subject was literary property and censorship (VH, vn, 1316), Emma's death is associated with the question of suppression/repression in the context of a lost cause. 25 March is the coincidence of the Annunciation, the Hilaria and the Crucifixion, and the question of pregnancy is associated with this date by the reference to the difficulty of fitting Emma's body into the wedding dress because cle ventre etait devenu trop gros' (JVV, 619). This is also the date of Emma's peaujaundtre and of the spider's webs covering her eyes (NV, 617) at the beginning of a date that will end with Bournisien's reference to the way to lure back to the hive bees who have left after a death: 'un petit morceau de drap rouge que Ton suspend les fait revenir' (NV, 620). 23 March, date of the births of Murat and his wife Caroline Bonaparte, can also be equal to / j August through the coincidence with 15 February, and the reference to the Emperor's complexion is followed by images of the Legion
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d'Honneur. The spider's web refers to the etymology of phalange, and the suspended red fabric is an assurance that, after the death of the founder, Bonapartism can always attract old and new adherents to the cult of pseudo-glory by dangling the red ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur. The Blind Man's song repeats the story of abduction associated with the myth of Persephone and her sightless ravisher and with Le Petit Chaperon rouge, and on a date, 14 February,
during Faunus' festival at the Parentalia (Fasti, 71-5): the Blind Man's appearances of 12/22 and 14/24 February/March 1846 are also those of the festival of the dead in an atmosphere of woodland savagery. His first appearance on 5 December 1844 coincided with another festival of the amorous god who protected lambs from wolves (OCD, 432), and his wild, hairy appearance at that time (NV, 3511) indicated that he was both Faunus and the reviled and returned man—god whose blue cloak and black beaver hat had become sodden rags. The Blind Man's pointed face and teeth (NV, 351) and his comparison to a hungry dog establish that he is both the Empeior and the wolf whose hunger forces him to carry off unsuspecting youth. Emma's agony occurs during the Quinquatria in honour of Minerva from ig to 23 March, but the festival belonged to Mars before Minerva's cult was superimposed on it, and Mars, the killing deity, was a woodland and fertility god first. Emma's gift to her father of a Minerva's head was a denial of the destructive element in human nature, and the coincidence that Emma's death occurs on the 4 April of Napoleon's abdication in favour of his son and on the day associated with Saturn's devouring of his children (Fasti, 203) is further proof of the power of the devouring wolf that civilisation would like to deny. Berthe's frightened reaction to her mother's enlarged eyes and perspiring skin is evidence that the wolf's victim has become the wolf, that the Revolution and Empire devoured their own children, that the process is about to begin again with the triumph of the Homais and Lheureux whose innocuous appearance disguises a rapacious hunger. Charles's death is defined as occurring eighteen months after Emma's (NV, 642), hence on 24 September 1847; yet the timing of
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that end is also described as August (NV, 641), so Charles's final meeting with Rodolphe occurs on a 23 August/September which is also 2 September through the calendar change of 23 August/2 September 1610, and his death repeats the coincidence of 3/14 September for Emma's crise nerveuse, as well as that of the day of her poisoning. 24 August is a fascinating date in itself. In ancient Rome it was one of three dates in the year on which the mundus sacred to Hades/Dispater and Persephone/Proserpine was opened to reveal shadowy secrets to the people. On that occasion, the vault of heaven itself was opened symbolically in a pagan version of the rending of the veil of the temple, and the distinction between sacred and profane was abolished. The secrets revealed/re-veiled on this occasion are related to Emma's wish for a son named Georges and Mere Lefrangois's determination not to 'changer mon billard' (1, 599). On 24 August 1844, Leonie d'Aunet Biard gave birth to a son named Georges Biard, after commencing a liaison with Victor Hugo on 23 November 1843 (VH, VII, 1302), the date of Charles's mention of a 'fameuse maitresse' (JW, 521). Flaubert was the 'postman' for the correspondence between Hugo and 'sa Dulcinee', and Charles's death a year to the day before the decree establishing the postal service in France on 24 August 1848 is related to Flaubert's role in the system of communication through Berthe's mention of 'la nourrice' on Emma's deathbed. Mere Rollet was the postmistress for the correspondence between Emma and Leon as well as providing a place of assignation during Leon's trips to Yonville. All the paraphernalia of double envelopes that characterised Flaubert's role as the go-between, as well as that of correspondent in his relationship with Louise Colet, is present in the correspondence between Emma and Leon, and it is this part of her relationship with Leon that constitutes the 'autre poison plus fort' that is killing Emma. The strange relationship that exists between literary idols and tyros is given subtle treatment through the circumstances of Charles's death. The novel which announced itself as a debut performance from the beginning ends with an examination of the relationship between one of Romanticism's giants (who was
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also a literary giant tout court) and the novice who is examining the inheritance of the previous generation of literary ideas. When Charles is described as wanting to be Rodolphe on the 23 August/September which is the date of Elisa's birth, Flaubert is setting his own sexual morality beside Hugo's and wondering if the differences are all that striking. Private and political morality are appropriate subjects on this saint-Barthe'lerny, so frequently quoted by Homais because it is his own name-day, and Charles's autopsy performed by Canivet on 25/26 August 1847 establishes Charles's body as an apparently empty envelope. However, 25 August 1848 was the occasion of Du Camp's receipt of the Legion d'Honneur, so the 'rien' of Charles's somatic interior deserves closer scrutiny. The question arises as to why the 25 August of the NV autopsy should become the 26 August of the DV, and why the reference to the eighteenmonth gap between Emma's death and Charles's which creates the coincidence of 23-6 August/September should be suppressed. The first version establishes Charles's inner emptiness on the anniversary of Buffon's Discours sur le style on the occasion of his reception into the Academie Francaise on 25 August 1753 (Cn, 1015): if style is Thomme meme', then Charles is an empty communication system. The change to 26 August/September 1847 makes the autopsy anticipate by three years the death in exile of Louis-Philippe on 26 August 1850 and the law restricting the liberty of the press of 26 September 1830 on the second anniversary of Louis Napoleon's first entry into the Assembly. The coincidence of the death of an exiled monarch and the entry into the political arena of a future monarch who had returned from exile is a more tempting coincidence for the writer to exploit than is the coincidence of la saint-Cleophas of 25 September with an autopsy in memory of a father who was passionate about dissection. The novel which began on a derisory date of the Creation subscribed to by the first Emperor ends with a second Bonapartist regime's awarding of the Legion d'Honneur to Homais, and the plans show Homais's association of the red ribbon with the Emperor Napoleon who 'created' the distinction and with the 'creator' who made Homais. ThisjVw de miroirs, as Homais
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stands in front of a mirror feeling like part of a great network through 'ce rayon de gloire qui commencait au sous-prefet [...] jusqu'a l'Empereur Napoleon qui l'a creee - Homais s'absorbait dans le soleil d'Austerlitz' (JW, 129), is part of a larger network. The repetition of red ribbons in the mirrors, the lightning rain of red ribbons, leads Homais to the question of whether he is just a character in a novel, the invention of a 'petit paltaquot' with a delirious imagination. Just as Hamilcar Barca associated dreams of empire with an invisible network linking him to the centre of the world, so Napoleon's phalanx of twenty-six marshals and countless citizens honoured with the red ribbon which belongs to the same date as the revival of the marshalate was appropriated by Balzac in his creation of the Treize, and indeed, of an entire world linked in the network of the author's imagination. The holistic approach to power has been bequeathed by the man-god to the world of literature, but the question for the tyro novelist who wrote MB was whether he was one of the many Little Napoleons like Homais, who mistook the baubles for true power, or whether in fact he had hit the big time. Charbovari's debut on 23 October 1827 associates Flaubertian creation with the Creation of 23 October 4004 BC as established by Ussher and Lightfoot, and with Restif de la Bretonne's birth on 23 October 1734 (AF, 324). Napoleon, who claimed that human history was a mere 6000 years old, subscribed to this farcical belief in a Biblically inspired beginning point, and his mania for anniversaries received impetus through his meeting with Captain Thomas Ussher, a descendant of the Archbishop who pinpointed the moment of Creation, during the voyage to Elba in 1814 (Mackenzie, 61, 64). The famous casquette which becomes a casque, then a cas..., is also a casket symbolising time's beginning, and that commencement point is Bonapartism. This composite, complicated creation full of 'vanites eparses, brisees' (1, 576) is a reconstitution of the 530,000 men from twenty nations who entered Russia as the Grande Armee in 1812 (Cronin, 310), as well as a symbol of the tyro novelist's opus itself. Its coincidence with the Malet conspiracy of 23 October 1812 announcing the bogus death of Napoleon (ibid.,
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329) anticipates Napoleon's desertion of the Grande Armee on a 5 December 1812 which links Flaubertian and Napoleonic destiny. As an outlandish version of the Emperor's black beaver bicorne, it anticipates the Blind Man's 'vieux castor defence' (1, 664) of 5 December 1844. The returned warrior's snow blindness and facial deterioration are symptoms of the legacy of the return from Moscow. Another legacy symbolised by the casquette/casque is constituted by the Emperor's last words on 5 May 1821: the 'tete d'armee', or 'tete armee' as Nerval saw it, is followed by 'Josephine' or 'mon fils' (ibid., 438). Nerval saw the legacy as a prophecy of the King of Rome's future sovereignty of France, but the Blind Man's body is a 'tete guillotinee' (NV, 532) symbolising the castration of a truncated dynasty. The members of Flaubert's generation are all 'mon fils', but Gustave's version of the inheritance lacks uniformity/conformity with the rest, and as such is the subject of ridicule. The parrot-like repetition of ridiculus sum in the opening scene, and of that scene in general, announces another temporal coincidence: that MB was begun in the year of the melancholy parrot's coup d'etat, and is therefore a rival of the second Napoleonic regime. The uniformity of the majority's version of the Napoleonic myth is undermined and challenged by this rival institution, and its destiny is to be suppressed: both Charbovari and his creator will be assigned to the bane correctionnel/banc deparesse.
The legacy of 1812/1821 has produced new versions of the grotesque, one of whose elements is based on the red velvet hood worn by the Emperor during the retreat from Moscow (Cronin, 326). The blending of the myth of Persephone/ Proserpine with Perrault's Petit Chaperon rouge and with the Grimms' Rotkdppchen is just one of the grotesque elements symbolised by the green velvet 'capuchon' (JVF, 623) in which Emma is buried. Demeter Chloe and France's major folkloric heroine are combined in MB. Not the least of the enigmas of MB is the question of why the Perrault-Grimm fairy tale of 1697 and 1812 respectively should make its fragmented appearance in a novel whose subject is the
Conception, birth, death in 'Madame Bovary3 French provincial bourgeoisie of 1827-1855. The essential difference between the two most famous versions of this most popular of all fairy tales is the element of political satire in the Grimms' 1812 version. While Perrault's moral stressed that the most dangerous wolves are the docile ones (Zipes, 71), Emma realizes that Leon's timidity is more dangerous to her than Rodolphe's obvious voraciousness and rapacity (1, 628, 654). Flaubert acknowledges Perrault's version in that comparison, but the Grimms' version of the tale was of equally French origin, though its political import concerned a contemporary phenomenon for the Germany of 1810-11. 'Little Red Cap' is a warning against the Jacobin Revolutionary spirit of the French armies who were importing rapine and plunder in the guise of equality, fraternity and liberty to the lands they were 'liberating', and the heroine is a model of the naive revolutionary spirit of German youth which could so easily be fooled by the seductive charm of glory's accoutrements. In listening to false propaganda, the naive individual could be swallowed by the wolf, becoming one with the wolf, since the Revolution eats its own children (ibid., 17-18). In both versions the tale is an apologia for authority and a hugely successful attempt to suppress nature and individual liberty in the name of civilisation and order. Its popularity, however, comes from its combination of seductive and warning elements. There are attractive appearances that mask danger, just as there are ideologies preaching social justice that disguise authoritarianism. The red ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur, whose other face is the blue coat of French militarism or the red cloak of Spartanism, is Flaubert's symbol of the attractive, alluring appearances disguising absolutism. Madame Bovary can be read as the tale of a legacy from the Grande Armee, from the First Imperial Regime to the Second. While Flaubert encoded the year 1837 in the first version of the wedding feast of Charles and Emma, 1643 w a s substituted in the DV. The year in which Louis XIV's accession coincided with Moliere's foundation of the Illustre Theatre substitutes for 1851, the year when Flaubert's embarkation on the writing of MB coincided with the coup establishing the second Napoleonic
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regime. Nowhere is it said that Emma's father, like Charles's, served in the army, but the delay between the birth of Emma's brother and the wedding of Emma's parents in the years 1807 to 1814 indicates that the Napoleonic Wars had their part to play in the question of illegitimacy, and Theodore Rouault's earrings are an exotic element like Tellier's earrings or Bovary pere's ring-studded fingers. When Charles first visits Les Bertaux, Emma talks about the wolves roaming about at night in this season of harsh cold, when the animals are indoors in the byre. When Rodolphe, the wolf, lures Emma into the forest, she is frightened by his ravenous approach to her, but succumbs when he disguises his rapacity. As Emma lies on her deathbed, her own daughter notices her large eyes and her heavy perspiration, and is afraid (1, 682). The 'nom' uttered by Berthe and which seems the criticism of Emma's whole life is 'Lolo' in the first version (jVF, 604), the name which associates nourishment with the wolf, just as Yonville is bounded by the Cote Saint-Jean of Waterloo and the Cote des Leux which Flaubert defined as '(cles Loups)' (NV, 238). The Blind Man, that famished dog with pointed face and teeth who is blinded like the setting or wintry sun, and who appears on J / / J December 1844 /January 1845 and on 22 and 24 March 1846, is the blue-coated remnant whose song still speaks of seduction and of the opulence of the earth and forest (JVV, 531-2; 1, 664-5). Where Nanette's story (as in the Blind Man's song) differs from the fairy tale, however, is that Nanette is diligently gleaning the harvest, not absentmindedly gathering flowers like the latterday Persephone. As Nanette approaches the furrow which is the synecdoche of all the earth's wealth, the wind from that furrow blows and winnows her. She is swallowed up by the gouffre because of her diligence in following a straight path, and Hades, the Sightless One, carries her off in spite of her industry. This is a parable of the Blind Man's own castration in the path of duty, and a mnemonic device on the part of the author of the fact that the greatest of the ancient bards was also sightless (1,228).
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The fictional mode is not the sole domain of literary figures, and more tales are told in the guise of non-fiction than in the forms which admit their fictional framework. Napoleonic propaganda was as much a part of Orleanist France as it was of the Empires, and it is necessary to be wary when a Flaubertian character is described as a legitimist in view of the fact that Remusat, Thiers's own Minister of the Interior in 1840, could announce to the Chamber that Napoleon was the true and legitimate sovereign of France (Collingham, 245). Heloise Dubuc Bovary abhors Lafayette and the Orleanists, but has a name, Dubuc, which refers to the long trunk which is the hereditary stamp of the Bonapartes (DD, 5). The Blind Man's appearance on Thursday 5 December 1844 signals the coincidence of the beginning of Louis XVI's trial on 5 December ijg2 with Napoleon's desertion of the Grande Armee on j December 1812, and the date in 1805 of the Emperor's first experience of snow blindness (RMW 186). The Blind Man's body is compared to a 'tete guillotinee' (JVT7, 5321) in a repeated version of the reference to the Amboise bell which cracked when Louis XVI went to the guillotine (jVF, 492). The coincidence of the suisse and the date, 10/20 August, which combines the massacre of the Swiss Guard and the end of monarchy on 10 August ijg2 with the conception of Louis Napoleon on 20 August 1807, is indicated by the beadle's 'nez de perroquet' (NV, 493). As well as symbolising Bonapartist propaganda, the Blind Man is the body of Napoleon himself, for his appearance on the anniversary of the Emperor's last return on / j December 1840 is the sign that he is a revenant. The blue rags and battered beaver round hat are all that is left of the blue cloak of Marengo in which the Emperor was buried, and of the p'tit chapeau made famous by Berenger.
CHAPTER 4
Heads and tails in 'Salammbo'
'des crimes et des malheurs' 'des fables convenues'
Voltaire
FISHBONE CALENDAR
i. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Nyssan Siv Sivan Tammouz Ab Eloul
7. Tischri 8. Heshvan 9. Kislev 10. Tibby 11. Schebar 12. Adar
Salammbo's opening banquet commemorates a 'Mexican standoff', not really such an inappropriate metaphor to apply to a Carthaginian novel ending with an Aztec sacrifice (Butor, 126; Green, 112). Polybius uses the imagery of boxing to indicate that there was no winner at Eryx (p. 104), for there was no decisive battle (ibid., 103), hence no distinguishing date on which to peg an anniversary. However, Polybius does associate the fighting there with the temple of Venus Erycina (ibid., 101) whose rites were celebrated by Rome's prostitutes on 25—5 April (Fasti, 253). 25 April was the Robigalia (ibid., 2551!), when red-haired puppies just like the pink, silky-haired ones eaten at the banquet (1, 694) were sacrificed to the god of Mildew (Frazer, 625). Oddly enough, Flaubert expresses his debt to Polybius' chronological system through a reference to Livy: when Giscon strikes Authararite's head with his ivory baton (1, 696), the parallel to the
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invasion of Rome by the Gauls is indicated (Livy, 387). In both instances, a Gallic barbarian is enthralled by the majesty of age and is struck with an ivory staff, an allusion to the fact that the date de base of Polybius' chronological system is that of the invasion of Rome by the Gauls in c. 387 BG (Pedech, 477). When Salammbo calls out the names of the fish/months (1, 697) at the opening banquet of 25 April/ October 241 BC, a process of selection is in operation. These fish/months are Siv (2), Sivan (3), Tammouz (4), Eloul (6), Tischri (7), Schebar (11). The choice of an opening point is based on the fact that the banquet occurs in Siv (April-May), but the apparent randomness of the other selections disguises a consistency. The 'fete trois fois sainte' celebrating the resurrection of the year in Carthage (1, 751) occurs at the autumn equinox on / Tischri (F&C, 71). For the Hebrews and Canaanites, this was one of the two beginnings of the year; the other coincided with the vernal equinox on / Nyssan. The year is a doubled phenomenon, an identity which dies and is resurrected at the end of its first half. Therefore, the six fish/month names cover the whole year, since Tischri (7) substitutes for Nyssan (1) and Schebar (11) for Ab (5). This is perfectly in line with what Gothot-Mersch finds in the plans: the morning of Matho's escape with the Zctimph is described as occurring first in Tibby and last in Tammouz, though Eloul is substituted along the way. Again, the return of Hamilcar is placed in both Eloul and Schebar, even though the phrase 'on etait au mois d'Eloul, en plein hiver' (G-M, 24) is impossible in view of the phrase 'les chaleurs du mois d'Eloul' (G-M, 26). Salammbo is a paper construction, a text fabricated from small fragments of other texts; hence it is possible to have roses and lilies blooming while grapes and pomegranates are fruiting at the opening banquet (1, 694). The text must be consistent; it must match its 'pre-texts': nature must be adapted to culture in the realm of culture. Salammbo's fish named for the months suggest the Egyptian solar year on which the Mosaic and the French Revolutionary calendars were based, an idea supported by Hamilcar's sighting of Tank's slim crescent on 12 Nyssan (1, 778). A purely lunar calendar would mean an almost full moon on that date. The
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choice offish as mensual equivalents is based on the configurations of fishbones: as Pecuchet will later observe in relation to training peach trees, the trick is to obtain a perfect pattern of six on the right, six on the left, not counting the two main ones, all in the shape of a fishbone (n, 214). The parallel with BeP is not a fanciful one. Varro's farmer's calendar is based on the chefd'oeuvre of the genre so admired by the Romans that they commissioned a translation of Mago the Carthaginian's agricultural opus after the fall of Carthage in 146 BG (Tilly, 28). Mago's calendar, though scoffed at by Varro, may be the most enduring legacy (aside from the legend of the Bareas) left by the nation whose fields were sown with salt by its powerful enemy. BeP dramatises the difficulties for the amateur of matching times and events in order to make sense of life and/or farming. Ovid's Fasti covers only January to June; originally, the Romans marked days only to the middle of the month, as the calends, nones and ides show. The Ancients liked heads/ beginnings, but not tails/endings. Salammbo's fish/months cover the whole year because the second half of anything is merely an inferior copy of the first. Hence the gigantic Matho who butts with his head like a ram (1, 698) is attended by the diminutive, 'serpentile' (serpentine and servile) Spendius (1, 699, 710), and a pun on Salammbo's name (sale-lambeau) expresses the pejorative connotations of all tails. The novel is littered with chunks of flesh, fabric and discourse which indicate that Salammbo's way of thinking goes against the grain: she has a habit of listening to and repeating only the final noun clusters of statements, the tail ends of discourse, as it were: - Elle inspire et gouverne les amours des hommes. - Les amours des hommes! repeta Salammbo revant. (1, 709) - C'est le voile de la Deesse! - Le voile de la Deesse! s'ecria Salammbo. (1, 720) - Tu ne seras pas plus belle le jour de tes noces! - Mes noces! repeta Salammbo. (1, 756) - A moins, peut-etre, que tu ne sois Tank? - Moi, Tank? se disak Salammbo. (1, 759)
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This echolalia is a habit which, according to Dumesnil (D33, 34), also characterises Norman speech patterns. When Zarxas first enters the novel in the form of a human sale-lambeau (1, 706), he claims that the 300 Balearic slingers who arrived in Carthage on 27 April were massacred on 28-g April 241 BC because they overslept and did not leave with the rest of the Mercenaries on that date. 27 April or its approximation marked the Toxcatl, greatest festival of the Mexican year, at which a young man personating the god of gods was sacrificed in order that the god of the next year could be resurrected (Frazer, 769). The newly arrived and innocent Baleares are sacrificed instead of their compatriots who ate the Barca dynasty's sacred fish (1, 696) at the time of the Rouen Massacres of 26-8 April 1848 (A73, x). Spendius' anguish, beginning on 2g April, is calmed suddenly on the evening of / May 241 BC (1, 701), when this Campanian prostitute's son finds himself in the month dedicated to Mercury's mother and the Elders {Fasti, 265). The Thargelia, celebrated on 6-7 Thargelion in Athens, took place at about the end of April or beginning of May (Parke, 147). 6 Thargelion was the day ofthe pharmakoi or scapegoats, and Spendius, as a slave, would be a prime candidate for the role among the Greeks of the Mercenary army. The evening of / May/7 Thargelion represents the passing of the nefaste moment still associated in Europe with the evil spirits of Walpurgisnacht. The army arrives at Sicca on 4 May 241 BC. Thus, Salammbo begins with a ten-day time run whose only 'silent' day is the one which precedes/follows the vision of the crucified lions of 2/3 May 241 BC (1, 702). These lions represent the sign Leo as the period of great heat which makes the lions move towards human settlement in search of food (Richmond, 41), and the Carthaginians crucify the ones they catch as an example to the others (1, 702). The lack of specification as to which of the two days contains the lions points to a coincidence: 2 May is the original saint-Napoleon (Pierrard, 159), and Napoleon was fond of repeating that his name meant 'desert lion' (Cronin, 152). 3 May is the Inventio Sanctae Crucis (AF, 144). The 4 May of the Mercenaries' welcome by the prostitutes of Sicca is
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also the time of Napoleon's disembarkation at Elba in 1814 (Hudson, 178), and of the proclamation of the Republic in 1848. Chiron the Centaur, teacher of Aesculapius/Eschmoun (1, 695) and of Achilles, was wounded by Hercules' poisoned arrow on 25 April and died on the ninth day, 3 May (Fasti, 291), so the first nine days of the action of Salammbo are those of Chiron's passion as his blood and bones were steeped in poison. Matho's passion begins on that same 25 April when he is offered a drink by Salammbo and wounded by Narr'Havas' javelin (1, 698). Mythology and history are blended. The zodiac as a model produces a year beginning with Aries on / Nyssan/21 March, though the equinoxes and solstices were assigned later dates in the Julian calendar. For the period between 241 and 237 BG, the summer solstice was reckoned at 26-y June (Gn, 580), but there is evidence that Flaubert also acknowledged the conventional dates instituted by the literature of the classical period and perpetuated by the Christian religion: St John's Day on 24 June as the summer solstice, the Nativity on 25 December as the winter solstice, and so on. Voragine mentions the 'custom of ancient peoples to wake through the nights of the solstices' (p. 50) with regard to the shepherds' watch at the time of Christ's birth. Voragine also mentions the notion that the nativity was revealed through the death of the Sodomites 'who that night perished throughout the world' because homosexuality was too evil to be tolerated at such a holy time (ibid., 50). Hence, Matho and Spendius are awake throughout the night of 24-5 June/December when they steal the Zjvimph and are almost killed in the Aqueduct (1, 715), and the tent feast and alliance between Matho and Narr'Havas is celebrated throughout the night of 25—6 June/December. One of Flaubert's erudite jokes is taken further than this: 24 December is the night when Bouvard and Pecuchet are tempted to commit suicide (11, 276). In the Defile episode of Salammbo, the homosexual warriors who are to die on / May spend the night of jo April to 1 May feasting (1, 787), and this indicates that the beginning and end points of the shepherds' year, those of Beltane and Samhain (Belmont, 67), are also the occasion of watches. The earliest fixed date on which the crucifixion was
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commemorated, 25 March (Frazer, 473), may have been chosen because of Christ's chastising his disciples for failing to keep watch in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of the vernal equinox. As a general rule, then, occasions on which characters stay up all night can function as indicators of traditional turning-points of the year. Pliny's Natural History is the basis of further discrepancies indicating the doubling of time. As indicated above, the description of the opening banquet includes roses and lilies, reflecting Pliny's statement that the rose is still in blossom when the lily appears (vi, 209) in spring, and the simultaneous fruiting of grapes and pomegranates indicates that the date is 23 April AND October. The six-month coincidence/discrepancy has its parallel at the mensual level as well: Pliny states that when the moon rises at sunset opposite the sun, so that sun and moon are visible at the same time, it is full moon (v, 393), yet the narrator speaks of the crescent moon's rising in identical circumstances on Salammbo's wedding day (1, 795). The gap of half a month which repeats that of half a year produces another multiplication of time: the discrepancy of 14/15 days makes the date 13 AND 27/28 April/ October. Hence, Matho's passion occurs at the time of the Rouen Massacres, of the Toxcatl of 27 April and of the sacrifice of the innocent Baleares on 28 April/ October. The marriage /murder, which anticipates that of ESn, is quite elaborately contrived: Flaubert's notes show that cLe jour des noces fixe dans la nouvelle lune' is intentionally anachronistic (Green, 138), as is the 4/5 December of the later novel. A further feature of Pecuchet's fishbone peachtrees was the fact that there was always a discrepancy between holes and fillings (11, 214), so the use of Homeric epithets in Salammbo signals moments in time which apply to earlier or later dates. Autharite reminds his compatriot Gauls of a bear leaving its cavern to see if the snow has melted in the Defile period (1, 784), and this sign of emerging spring in Northern Europe is associated with the Chandeleur of 2/14 February (Belmont, 70), time of the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries of Anthesterion in Athens, according to Voragine's statement that the Christian festival replaced a procession in honour of Proserpine (p. 151).
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The Chandeleur motif in the Defile de la Hache occurs at a time which is more than five moons after the sacrifice to Moloch, hence in Nyssan or Tischri, so it relates both to the 14/24 February/March pattern in MB and to the 13 Schabar of the Barbarian attack on Carthage (1, 770) which would fall on 2/3 February. The red-headed Gaul Autharite is a human barometer signalling contemporaneous seasons in France. Polybius defined the length of the Inexpiable War between Carthage and her Mercenaries as three years four months (F&C, 1), and the narrator is quite specific in defining what constitutes the war proper. It begins on 13 June/December 241 BC, with the imprisonment of Giscon (1, 714, 750) and ends with the death of Matho on Salammbo's wedding day (1, 782, 788), three years and four months later, hence on 13 October 238/April 23J BC. Along the way, Flaubert has used the six-month discrepancy/ coincidence to drop/add half a year when necessary, an example occurring during the period of the sacrifice to Moloch: when the narrator gives the date 7 Nyssan (1, 774), the 'real' month involved is Tischri, the one substituted for Nyssan in Salammbo's lament (1, 697). References to tabernacles (1, 779), to the Thesmophoria and to the Eleusinian Mysteries (1, 781) during the sacrifice indicate that the autumn festival of Tabernacles is being superimposed on the spring festival of Passover. Again, the 3 Tibby (1, 742) of the eve of the Battle of the Macar is also 3 Tammouz, which is why the west, instead of the east, wind is blowing on the night of 24-5 June/December when Hamilcar crosses the Macar (1, 743). Pliny (iv, 65) defined the winter solstice as the time of the east wind in North Africa; hence Flaubert substitutes the west wind for the crossing which occurs at the summer solstice. The use of a disguised date signals a historical parallel: the French army crossed the Niemen on 24-5 June 1812 (AF, 197), the fifth anniversary of Napoleon's meeting with Alexander on the tent-covered raft on the Niemen on 25-6 June i8oy (Cronin, 303). Hamilcar, the older Napoleon, crosses the Macar on the 'anniversary' of the tent alliance between Narr'Havas/Alexander and Matho, the younger Napoleon, 25-6 June/December 241 BC. Fay and Coleman (p. 5) situate the theft of the ^a/imph in July
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because it occurs in the month of Tammouz. Yet Tammouz begins in the latter part of June, and the baptismal immersion in the aqueduct points to 24-j June 241 BC as the date of the vol/viol du voile. Frazer's work shows that fire and water festivals at the summer solstice predate the attribution of 24 June to the Baptist by a long period (p. 814), and Ovid's Fasti (p. 381) emphasises the identical length of contiguous days around the solstices at the two periods of the year when the sun stands still. As Flaubert indicated in his response to Sainte-Beuve's attack on Salammbo, 'il y a des choses de climat qui sont etemelles' (11, 752). 21 June marks the appearance of the constellation Ophiuchus/Aesculapius (Fasti, 377), and Aesculapius/Eschmoun and the Kabires are the figures depicted in the folds of the ^aimph (1, 718). Scullard (p. 210) identifies the Lares celebrated on 22 December in the Roman calendar with the Cabiri, so both solstices are involved. The sun stands still at the solstice; it cannot move itself unless it is renewed by immersion in water. The importance of anniversaries in Salammbo is indicated by Spendius' choice of a time for the theft of the Zaimph'' he asks Matho about Carthage's water supply on 22 June, drags Matho to the edge of the lake on 23 June and enters Carthage with Matho on the night of 24 June/December 241 BC (1, 715). The Zp/imph is torn in the early hours of 25 June as Matho leaves Salammbo's room, and the feast with Narr'Havas occurs on the night of 25-6 June/'December 241 BC (1, 721), exactly two months after the opening banquet of 25-6 April 241 BC. The Greeks celebrated anniversaries monthly rather than annually (Parke, 29). Spendius hides the £aimph under sheepskins just before Narr'Havas enters the tent, and the Baptist wears a sheepskin in ESn. The superimposition of the vernal equinox, time of the appearance of the Golden Fleece constellation, on the summer solstice symbolised by Aesculapius (Fasti, 185, 387) applies to the tent feast as well, for the sacrifice of a white bull with a black ewe, symbols of day and night (1, 721), points to a coincidence with the equinox as equal day and equal night, though it is meant to symbolise the solstice as longest day, shortest night. Since Hamilcar is told, at the meeting on the night of 14-15 February/August 240 BC, that Matho was seen leaving Salam-
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mbo's room with the ^a'imph one morning in the month of Tammouz (i, 733), the morning in question is that of 25 June/ December 241 BC. Therefore, Matho's suspicion that Hamilcar must have chosen the day for the Battle of the Macar (1, 746) is quite correct, because Hamilcar's troops leave Carthage after sunset on the day which was 3 Tibby (1, 746) but which became 4 Tibby at sunset. Tibby is six months before/after Tammouz, and 4 Tibby is equal to 24—5 December/June. The Battle of the Macar occurs on 2j June/December, the 'anniversary' of Matho's departure with the £aimph. The doubling of time enables Flaubert to 'save' six months by substituting June for December. The narrator is quite cunning about the weather at the time of the crossing of the Macar: in desert surroundings, the days are extremely hot and the nights extremely cold (1, 743). Winter and summer are barely distinguishable in such desert conditions. Hamilcar's later saving of Hannibal at the beginning of 12 Nyssan/the evening of 1 April (1, 774, 778) makes the sacrifice to Moloch occur during the Passover. The crucifixion occurred on 14 Nyssan (JBB, xxxvi) and Hannibal's substitute is the fourteenth in a line of victims whose number is meant to duplicate the days of the solar year (1, 780-1) which Flaubert's notes define as beginning 'au mois de 7bre automne, pluvieuse, orageuse' (Green, 132). Hence, Nyssan equals Tischri, as was indicated in the list of fish-months and the coincidence that 4 April is the date of the Megalensia which Ovid associates with Rhea/ Cybele's substitution of a stone for the child Saturn wanted to devour (Fasti, 203) and of the sacrifice to Moloch explains why Hamilcar is compared to a mother at the time he substitutes a slave's child for Hannibal. Once again, it is through the use of discrepancies that Flaubert cues the reader as to how the system works: the opposite of a sale-lambeau is a mat, and Flaubert changes Polybius' spelling of Mathos by removing the final letter and adding the circumflex to make 'Mdtho' a synonym of Gustave (CY, 289). The staff of the God or Goth becomes the mdt-thos, so Matho's name and Libyan origins indicate that he is related to the Egyptian solar calendar, in which the birth of the Staff of the
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Sun is celebrated on 13 December (Gi, 205), Gustave's birthday and the date of the beginning of the war. Similarly, Spendius' Campanian origins in Polybius are played down in favour of his Greek father, a discrepancy which makes Spendius a GraecoRoman barometer. Hamilcar's departure for the Battle of the Macar after 3 Tibby signals other coincidences. Hanucah occurs between 25 Kislev and 2/3 Tibby (Richmond, 76), so Hamilcar leaves after the festivities have finished, and this indicates a third beginning to the year as an alternative to / Nyssan and / Tischri. Since the army left Carthage at sunset at the very beginning of 4 Tibby, 24 June/December, the Battle of the Macar of 25 June/December
results in the torture of the captives which unites the Carthaginian populace on 28 June/'December, exactly fourteen/twenty months after the slaughter of the Baleares on 28-2g April/ October 241 BC.
Fay and Coleman's highlighting of the problem of the 'fin de Fete' point between Schabar and Nyssan (F&C, 7) is another example of a temporal coincidence which becomes comprehensible in the light of the doubling of time on the occasion of Salammbo's journey to the Barbarian camp. This occurred early in Tischri in 'logical' terms, and Flaubert's response to Sainte-Beuve indicated that the storm which followed the episode 'sous la tente' coincided with the end of summer (11, 753). But the time is also Nyssan through the earlier departure of the doves for Eryx which is north of Carthage, so early Nyssan can also be defined as the end of summer, which is what is happening in chapter xm when that end of summer falls between Schabar and 7 Nyssan. Now the reason for the discrepancies in the brouillons becomes clear: Flaubert's apparent hesitation between Tammouz, Eloul and Tibby for the date of Matho's departure with the veil (G-M, 24) makes the date 25 June/August/December, and the hesitation between Eloul and Tibby for the date of the battle of the Macar (ibid., 24-5) indicates the same coincidence of 25 June/August/December for that event. The Tammouz/Tibby equivalence creates a coincidence of Eloul and Adar, and Flaubert will later refer to the heat of the month of Eloul/
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Sivane (G-M, 25), indicating a 25 August/May equivalence which parallels the superimposition of the equinox on the solstice at the time of the tent feast/alliance. The most perplexing superimposition concerns the return of Hamilcar, when the phrase 'au mois d'Eloul en plein hiver' occurs (ibid., 25) as a substitute for Schebaz. Hamilcar's return is thus dated at 14 February/ August/September/March, an equivalence familiar since ESi, when Henry and Emilie arrive in Le Havre on 14 February/March. All of Flaubert's substitutions in the brouillons as reported by Gothot-Mersch (pp. 23-6) involve the month of Eloul (AugustSeptember), in such a way that Eloul is made the equivalent of Tammouz (June-July), Tibby (December-January), Sivane (May-June), Schebat (January-February) and Adar (FebruaryMarch), the doubled intercalary month, Veadar, in the Canaanite/Hebrew calendar. Salammbo is a product of censorship: its composition followed the trial of MB, as is indicated by Green's reference to the coral mixed with sand to ward off the evil eye at the opening banquet (p. 109). Green is convinced that Salammbo is Flaubert's 'first attempt' to come to terms with the political events of his time (ibid., 75), and it is the writer's especial ability to fuse personal and historical events with those of mythology which constitutes the strength of literature as a form of 'History'. To speak of Salammbo as a product of censorship is not to confine the meaning of the term to the political: both Hamilcar Barca and Gustave Flaubert are seeking self-perpetuation, as Hamilcar's vision of the eternal empire of the Barcas makes plain (1, 792). Hamilcar's return to Carthage on 14 February 2jg BC is indicated by the she-wolf howling of Salammbo's women on the following day. This signals the basis of the Lupercalia in the season when wolves become a danger to flocks and birds begin mating (Belmont, 56). Hamilcar allows another man to raise his son, and does not even allow Hannibal to know of his relationship to the powerful suffete until the 14 February time of his orders to Iddibal to remember everything and to love Hannibal. This occurs just before Hamilcar gives Iddibal permission to speak to Hannibal of Hamilcar (1, 730). The relationship between Hamilcar and Hannibal is one of the most perplexing
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aspects of Salammbo, and its association with the 14/15 February of IddibaFs disguise as an old female slave and the / April of Hamilcar's saving of his son through the substitution of a slave's child duplicates the timing of Emma Bovary's death on 14/24 February/March/1 April 1846.
14 February was later the beginning of the Roman year for a time under Augustus (Richmond, 171), and it represents another attempt of the later Emperor to associate himself with any period that might duplicate the original beginning of time, the moment of creation. Under Napoleon Bonaparte's orders, French troops entered the Eternal City on 15 February ijg8 and Massena entered Naples on 14 February 1806 under similar orders, on the eve of Joseph Bonaparte's / j February entry as king (Soboul, 11, 408; PY, 60; NW, 98). The association of the Lupercalia with the legendary founding of Rome in 753 BG has produced a rejection of 21 April as the traditional date in favour of the eve of the Lupercal. That the Catholic church saw the Lupercalia as important is indicated by the placing of la saintAdolphe and the Purification on 14 February when the saint died on 30 June (Delaney, 28). Flaubert's association of the father-son relationship with la saint-Adolphe and with the time of the conception of Adolphe Schlesinger on / April 1841 produces a strange situation between Hamilcar and Hannibal, as is indicated by Hamilcar's orders to another man to love his son and his emotional outburst in the presence of his ancestors at a time when no one can see him. His affectionate overflowing shocks Hannibal and is compared to the love of a mother for her lost firstborn (1, 778). This scene is the diametric opposite of that of / April 1842 when Emma Bovary rejects Berthe so violently (1, 613). It is not difficult to see what attracted Flaubert to Carthage as a symbol of contemporary France: the coincidence that Carthage and Napoleon come from roots meaning 'new city' and that Hamilcar and Melkarth also come from car, city (RBS, 8, 34) makes the Punic city-state a well-named equivalent for Napoleonic France, both the two empires and the periods which produced them. The parallels with the events of 1848 and the period up to the 'founding' of the Second Empire through the
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coup of 1851 have been rendered in disguised form through the plethora of possibilities for denning the exact timing of the events of the Punic calendar by comparison with the Gregorian. Here, too, the period was chosen carefully, for the cessation of comparability between the calendars of the Ancients in 246 BG, another 'anniversary' in reverse of Uanne'e-maudite, 1846 (Samuel, 146), gives the writer the opportunity to multiply time through alternative definitions of that relationship. The simplest of these is the fishbone pattern, and it affords astounding parallels with Flaubert's experiences and with historical events in contemporary France. The coincidence of the opening of the novel and the bloody disturbances in Rouen after the election of 23 April 1848 provides the basis for a contradiction which conveys Flaubert's shame at using Senard, the 'Butcher of Rouen', to defend his first novel against the persecution of the second Imperial regime. The narrator goes to the trouble of explaining the psychological and political rationale of having two rival suffetes whose mutual antipathy would be assured by the placing of innumerable obstacles in the path of their uniting as joint tyrants over the Republic. At the beginning of the novel, those two suffetes are Hamilcar and Hannon, and Giscon is merely a general. By the time of his visit to the Mercenary camp on 10 June 241 BC, he is a suffete, so his resolution to avenge himself on the drunken protesters on the night of the banquet produced the 'ruse' of proposing the innocent, newly arrived Baleares as substitute victims for slaughter. The Revolution of 22 February 1848 came as a complete surprise to Louis-Philippe, and the powers of reaction in France were determined to undermine the Republic from the moment of its proclamation on 26 February 1848. The official proclamation of the Republic by its elected representatives on 4 May 1848 coincides with the Mercenaries' arrival in Sicca, and the further coincidence with Napoleon's disembarkation at Elba on the fourth anniversary of his illegitimate son's birth raises the question of legitimacy. It is impossible to define the basis of 'legitimate rule' because the group or individual that seizes and maintains power is seldom the one that is most
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virtuous or committed to principle, as the careers of the Bonapartes show. The Rouen protesters were not even 'in the right' in late April 1848: they were rejecting the outcome of the election, the first based on universal male suffrage, because it did not result in victory for the populist candidate. However, those who voted in that election in 1848 were poorly educated and still very much the victims of a paternalist social system, and the use of Gerard's troops against French workers cannot be attributed to anything other than political opportunism. Like the Mercenaries, the Rouen workers would have 'cooled down' after their drunken and disgruntled rumblings had run their course — if the whole potentially explosive situation had not been aggravated by Senard's heavy-handed and confrontationist tactics involving the use of cannon (Duveau, 193, 47, 52-3). Senard's election as President of the Assembly thirty-nine days after the Rouen massacres indicates that he profited from the blood of his countrymen. By making Giscon an unconstitutional suffete, Flaubert signals the illegitimacy of Senard's presidency. When Hannon visits the Barbarian camp on IJ May 241 BC, another coincidence occurs: IJ May 1848 is the date of the Assembly trap, when Aloysius Huber urged the Republican demonstrators who were protesting over Poland and the Rouen massacres to invade the Assembly chamber. Huber was a police spy under Louis-Philippe, and he was the only one who proposed such an invasion. The parallel with the situation in Rouen is a close one: in both cases, agitators who hope to profit from the hotheaded emotions of crowds incite mobs to commit hasty actions which will be seen as a refusal to accept the 'umpire's verdict', hence, as a threat to Order (Duveau, 52-3). All that is required is to substitute 'Baleares' for Polonais/ Rouennais and Hannon's / j May visit to the camp emerges as a version at a twenty-century remove of the events of 1848. Between this time and the theft of the %aimph on 24 June, Giscon arrives at the camp. The reader's sense of deja-vu at the time of Giscon's 13 June arrest signals the parallel with the events of 13 June 1849, when another demonstration over the illegality of the expedition to Rome became the pretext for
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exiling the most radical leaders and for the call for a more authoritarian regime (Duveau, 78). The political conniving behind this event is indicated by the fraudulent figures provided by the Rich for Giscon's mission. They hope to provoke the Barbarians into responding violently so that the ensuing quarrel will pre-empt payment of their wages. Yet the Barbarians do not respond to this provocation. Spendius' lies and insinuations are necessary to provoke violence, and Spendius fills the role of the mouchard who hopes to profit from every disorder, because a rational situation would reveal him as a runaway slave and deserter who was entitled to nothing more than being returned to the Romans in chains. It is when the false veteran is exposed as a mere slave that Spendius' efforts to provoke a confrontation begin. At the time of the 'Assembly trap', / j May, it is Spendius' urgings that produce the friction and the expulsion of Hannon on 16 May I November 241 BC(i, 713, 705).
Through the coincidence of March and June at the time of the tent alliance, the torture of the Carthaginian captives and the decapitation of Giscon after the episode Sous la Tente occur on 26-27 March/ September/June! December^ the time of the massa-
cres of insurrectionists by the gardes mobiles and of the 'sacrifice' of Archbishop Affre at the time of the armistice of 26 June 1848. Through the use of the fishbone calendar, the event anticipates the butchery of the June Days, and shows that conflicts produce casualties on both sides. The torture and killing of the Barbarian captives after the Battle of the Macar on the night of 28-g June/December anticipates Fouche's order for Napoleon's expulsion to Rochefort and Naloleon's compliance on 28-g June 1815 (Rose, 11, 517). In 1848, 28-g June saw the establishment of Cavaignac's government and Senard's appointment as Minister for the Interior (A73, 62), so the night of the second slaughtering of Barbarians is also that of a second reward for the Butcher of Rouen. As well as portraying the history of Flaubert's time, Salammbo gives an account of the Napoleonic legacy bequeathed to the Second Empire. The crucified lions on the way to Sicca are a rendition of the Dos de mayo and its aftermath in the massacre of
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civilians in Spain on the Tres de mayo, and a prolepsis of the disastrous defeat of Baylen on 22 July 1808. It is Napoleon himself who is being crucified through the Baylen surrender, the first defeat sustained by an Imperial army (Belloc, 40). It must not be forgotten that the event which aroused the Carthaginians' resentment was the slaughter of the Barca family's sacred fish, and Belloc points out that the basis of the 'Spanish ulcer' which was an omen of Napoleon's downfall was the sacrilegious looting in Spain. The armies of the Revolution and Empire had always looted abominably, but it was religious, rather than national or political, resentment that made the people of Spain such an unexpected problem for France and for Napoleon (Belloc, 65). A parallel occurs in the history of Carthage: the Bull of Phalaris 'in which the tyrant of Acragas used to roast his enemies alive' was one of the 'rich works of art' carried off by the Carthaginians at the time of the sacking of Agrigentum seventy years after Himera and restored to the Sicilians at the end of the Third Punic War (Ihne, 11, 25, 290). The statue of Moloch is itself a symbol of sacrilege and looting, as are the Zaimph and the sacred fish. As well as being a synonym for Naples and Carthage, the name Napoleon has been derived from the Greek Apollon, defined as 'from the depths of the lion' and expressing the meaningful relationship between the sun and the sign Leo, via the Corsican pronunciation of O'N'Apolio (Cirlot, 14, 226). Herold points out the special attraction the desert-as-motionless-ocean had for Napoleon as the symbol of immensity without beginning or end, of limitlessness. For Napoleon, the emblematic relationship between the lion and the desert (ibid., 79) gave special pleasure: he pointed out that Napoleon meant 'desert lion' (Herold, 145). Matho's wearing of the Herculean lion-skin signals another comparison with the 'man—god'; since St Napoleon was supposedly an Egyptian martyr who suffered in Alexandria under Diocletian (Cronin, 20), Matho the Lybian is a neighbour of the general who called the veterans of his Middle Eastern campaign 'Egyptians', just as Zarxas the Baleare is a neighbour of the Corsican. Interpretations of the Imperial name continued beyond the
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Second Empire, when the dead Napoleon III was seen as the eighth head among the Beasts of the Apocalypse, Apoleon fading imperceptibly into Apollyon, the Destroyer (Guedalla, 233). This imaginative leap is not surprising in view of the fact that Louis Napoleon was born while his uncle was telling Ferdinand VII that the time had come for the House of Bourbon to end its reign in Spain. News of the birth reached Napoleon in Bayonne on 23 April 1808, and his note to The Hague ordering that the child be called Charles Napoleon was dictated on the morning after the Dos de mayo 1808 (ibid., 31, 38). Like Hugo in Les Chdtiments, Flaubert suggests that the second emperor was the cross that the first Emperor had to bear; but his association of the crucified lions of 2/3 May 241 BC with the Desert Lion of France says much more. Murat's brutal suppression of the Spanish rebellion of 2 May 1808 led to an equally brutal reaction by Spanish rebels after 3 May 1808, and to the first experience of dishonour Napoleon suffered on 22 July 1808 when Dupont surrendered at Baylen. Here, another parallel with the events of Salammbo suggests itself: Dupont's acceptance of terms on the promise that French troops would be returned to France was not honoured by the Spanish. On Cabrera, the 'Goat Island' in the Balearics, the 18,000 who surrendered languished and died, month after month, on a rocky, bare, fruitless terrain (Belloc, 323-33) which resembles nothing so much as the Defile de la Hache - or the St Helena of Napoleonic mythology. Michelet argued that the armies of the Revolution thought that they had annihilated time through the gigantic upheaval France had witnessed at the end of the eighteenth century (Belloc, 51). A social and military system which promoted by merit was the basis of the French army's self-portrayal as a force of liberation whose successes in battle seemed to prove the superiority of Revolutionary doctrines and to justify the imperialism of the Napoleonic era. After the crucifixions of Spendius, Hannon and their respective companions, the Barbarians break out in red sores, and cannot decide whether the sores comes from having touched Hannon's body or from having committed the sacrilege of eating Salammbo's fish,
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which symbolise Time (1, 791). Both aetiologies are correct, for neither Time nor Monarchies are annihilated in terms of human emotional needs (1, 359), and the superiority of the anterior recognised in the ancient world and reflected in its calendar lore is one of the issues examined in Salammbo. Characterisation in Salammbo is based on a notion dear to the Ancients, that History is simply the actions of representative individuals or character types who reappear in each generation to re-enact their parts according to circumstances. Livy inherited these ideas common to Aristotle and Thucydides, along with the corollary that event-patterns from the past will be restaged in the present (Ogilvie, 12), and Flaubert has built his characters — and hence the events which they create — on these notions. Spendius, besides being an avatar of the Aratus who took the Acrocorinth (11, 753) just as Odysseus infiltrated Troy on 12/24 June 1184 BC (Nicolas, 22) (which anticipates Spendius' entry into Carthage on 24 June/December), becomes the wily Fouche in the dimension of Salammbo which replays the First Empire according to the Ancients' ideas of how History occurs, and hence should be written. The presence of the cast of characters from the First Empire in the novel is further indication of the power of the past to affect the actions of the present: Spendius is the 'serpentile' Fouche, whose element is shadow and the night and who urges others on to act in accordance with his own schemes (SZ, 11—13, 20-1, 33, 98); Hannon is both the Talleyrand who snorted water through his nose like an elephant (Orieux, 495), and the gout-ridden Louis XVIII who was Napoleon's rival as ruler of France; Matho is Napoleon Bonaparte and Hamilcar Napoleon I with his dreams of an empire/network which will cover the whole world (1, 738, 792) and a son who will be Alexander to the father's Philip. Talleyrand, however, is too complicated a character to be confined to a one-to-one equivalent: Giscon and Scahabarim embody further aspects of the famous diplomat who was also an apostate priest. The most interesting association, however, concerns Narr'Havas, the prince of the Numidians who becomes king during the course of the narrative. This composite, epicene character
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who seduces by his clothing and his enigmatic smile is a conflation of Henri de Navarre, Murat and Alexander I, as the tent pact/feast on 25-6 June 241 BC makes clear through its parallel with the meeting on a tent-covered raft in the middle of the Niemen River on 25-6 June i8oy (Cronin, 303). On later occasions, Napoleon was to say of Alexander that, if he were a woman, Napoleon would make him his mistress, and that the Czar had a seductive personality but could not be trusted, for he was a true Byzantine Greek (Herold, 173). Also present in the tent was Murat, the dashing cavalry officer who became a king through his alliance by marriage with Napoleon. Murat was so popular with the Cossacks, who admired his horsemanship (and the fondness for white plumes he shares with Narr'Havas and Henri IV) that they were later to cheer him on during the invasion of Russia (Con65, 271). Described variously as 'the chief Bedouin' by Mme de Stael, 'the Emperor's plumed cock' by Ney and a 'carnival of glory' by Talleyrand (ibid., 105, 271), Murat was present when the Niemen was crossed on 24-5 June 1812 for the disastrous foray into Russia. Both Alexander I and the King of Naples were to break their alliances with Napoleon, as Narr'Havas does when he wheels his Numidian cavalry around from Matho's side to Hamilcar's after the episode Sous la Tente in which Salammbo retrieves the ^aimph. The date of Narr'Havas' defection/alliance is 25 March/June, but it is also 25 July, date of Henri de Navarre's conversion to Catholicism in 1593 (AF, 230), through the presence of the lion-skin on the palm-branch bed which signals the coincidence of 24 March/ July via the sign Leo. Both Joachim Murat and his wife, Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon's sister, were born on the date of Salammbo's betrothal to Narr'Havas, 25 March, in 1767 and 1782 respectively (PY, 35; Kemble, 16). It is not necessary to look far to see why Henri de Navarre should be part of the composite character that is Narr'Havas. In the Response to Froehner, Flaubert referred to 'le nom numide de Naravasse que j'ecris Narr'Havas, de Nar-el-haouah, feu du souffle' (11, 755). Naravasse and Navarre are orthographically quite close, and Flaubert emphasises the royal H of Henri through an altered spelling which plays down the sibilants in
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favour of the double r of Navarre. The general who led his first Huguenot cavalry charge at the age of sixteen on 26 July 1370 was born on Gustave Flaubert's birthday, as was Alexander I of Russia. Like the Czar, Henri is a product of temporal anomalies: his birth on 13 December IJJJ occurred during Julian time and his assassination on 14 May 16 10 in Gregorian time. Alexander is also a product of temporal discrepancies: his birth on 12/23 December iyyy was eleven days 'behind' the Gregorian system, while his accession on 72/24 March 1801 following his father's assassination of the preceding night was twelve days 'behind' owing to the Gregorian 'gaining' of a day in 1800 (Troyat 1, 5iff). It is this discrepancy of ten, eleven or twelve days which accounts for the novel's opening date, with its coincidence of the festival of Venus Erycina on 23 April with the 2j April Robigalia: Narr'Havas' presence means that the date de base is 13 April, the date with which Salammbo begins and ends. Further, one of Henri IV's famous utterances provides a basis for Flaubert's method of conflated/doubled characters: when panic swept Paris on the night of 11—12 March ijgy at the news of the Spanish capture of Amiens, Henri observed: 'C'est assez faire le roi de France; il est temps de faire le roi de Navarre' (Buisseret, 65). His perception that one man can be two different characters and that he can alternate between them is the basis for the division of Napoleon into Matho and Hamilcar - and Napoleon was to make a similar statement at the time of the invasion of France in 1814, when he referred to putting on his Italian boots (Troyat, 180). Like Murat, with whom he shares the 'panache blanc' so admired by Henry Gosselin's father in ESi (1, 335), Henri IV had his battles with Spain, where he is also associated with a Dos de mayo through the treaty of Vervins on 2 May 1598. Although Vervins was a success for Henri, there was a small 'Spanish ulcer' attached, for Spain kept Cambrai until 1677 (Buisseret, 74). 'Henry had a lifelong and wholly justifiable conviction that Spain was the cause of all the miseries that had afflicted France in the last generation, and a positive knowledge that the greater part of his own domain of Navarre had been
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stolen from his family by a Spanish monarch' (Pearson, 112). Murat's 'Spanish ulcer' of 2 May 1808 was just as hard to take, since it coincided with his learning that Joseph was to have the throne of Spain and anticipated by seven years his loss of the crown of Naples at the Battle of Tolentino, 2 May 1815, when he was defeated by Napoleon's second wife's second husband, Neipperg (Murat, 21). Alexander's association with Spain stems from Tilsit, the meeting which is commemorated by the tent alliance of 25-6 June in Salammbo and which made Napoleon's invasion of Spain possible. All three historical personages associated with Narr'Havas share with him a power of personal attraction amounting to seduction; all three are associated with alliances through marriage and the betrayal of alliances, and all three have been portrayed as turncoats who swapped allegiances as easily as one might change clothes. However, a closer look at the biographies of these royal figures, as seen through the temporal coincidences of Salammbo, shows that the turncoat's position is not a happy one, nor even the result of a choice on most occasions. The deaths of Catherine the Great on 6117 November ijg6 and of Antoine de Bourbon on 17 November 1562 (Buisseret, 5; AF, 339) are the bases of the highlighting of these periods in Salammbo: Catherine's death revealed the denial of a legacy to her grandson Alexander in favour of her son Paul through the destruction of a manifesto (Troyat, 31), and Antoine's death meant that Henri could renounce a compelled Catholicism in favour of his mother's Protestantism. Henri learned on 13 June of Jeanne d'Albret's death on g June 1572 (Buisseret, 7). This death, which made him king of Navarre, was commemorated in his formal abjuration of Catholicism at Niort on 13 June 1576 after his escape from Royalist/Catholic custody (ibid., 10). Antoine de Bourbon's legacy to his son the Vert-Galant was the trait of ondoyance noted by Montaigne (ibid., 4) and this is the legacy which dictates Narr'Havas' to-ing and fro-ing between the Carthaginians and the Mercenaries in Salammbo. Narr'Havas' appearance at Sicca on the 6117 November of Catherine's and Antoine's deaths is an 'undercover' operation in the service of Carthage, and its intended outcome is the assassination of
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Matho (1, 703). The repetition of the 24 August date as the time of the theft of the £aimph, the return of Hamilcar and the Battle of the Macar indicates that the choice between a feigned conversion and death presented to Henri on the night of la saint-Barthelemy was no choice at all. Ondoyance, like Alexander's 'habit of reversing himself (Troyat, 67), is often more than a matter of political necessity. The theft of the £aimph and its coincidence with the dates of the Battle of the Macar and the episode Sous la Tente reveal the vulnerable position of all four royal figures who exist in the form of Narr'Havas. The Tibby/Tammouz/Eloul coincidence in the plans (G-M, 24), plus the sheepskins and mantle, mean that the Zjvimph is stolen on a night which is both solstices and equinoxes, Christmas, Easter, la saint-Barthelemy and the occasion of Henri's observation that Paris was well worth a mass. Jeanne d'Albret's profession of Protestantism on 25 December 1560 (Miquel, 524) points to the position of a son who was torn between a Catholic father and a Calvinist mother, a son who was offered the choice, on the night of la saint-Barthelemy, between conversion and death. In BeP, Flaubert takes exception to Dumas's assertion, in La Reine Margot, that Henri converted four days later (11, 243): the date of Navarre's conversion was 26 September 15J2 (Buisseret, 8), the date of the night spent feasting after the tent alliance, the date on which Matho will burn the tattered remnants of the tent with its bloody handprints betokening an alliance which was never more than a stratagem (1, 764). It is with the crucifixions of Spendius, Autharite, Zarxas, Hannon and the rest of the forty-one victims that the implications of Narr'Havas' multiple identities dictate the chronological progression. The date is 7 May I November 238 BC, but Narr'Havas' presence and his trick of coming between Hannon/Talleyrand and Hamilcar/Napoleon adds iy/18/ig May/November to the timing. Similarly, Hannon's presence and death create an equivalence of iy May and 10 March based on the coincidence that Hannon's defeat at the Aegates Islands on 10 March 241 BC in the Roman calendar occurred on iy May 241 BC in the Julian calendar (Pedech, 485) and that the document
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witnessing Talleyrand's return to the Catholic church on his deathbed on iy May 1838 was dated 10 March 1838 (Orieux, 648). Talleyrand's temporal fraud in connection with his conversion creates the same coincidence as that afforded by the Roman calendar, and 'la conversion du prince de Talleyrand' is mentioned at Notre-Dame de la Delivrande in BeP (11, 279). By this doubling, the gap of three months and two days between the crucifixions and the capture of Matho on 12 June/ December 238 BC (1, 793) is made possible. Autharite, when reminded by Spendius of the lions on the road to Sicca of 2/3 May/November 241 BC, claims with his dying breath that they were the brothers of the Mercenaries who are dying on this 7 May 238 BC. The ij May/10 March coincidence of Talleyrand's recantation and death, in his green dressinggown according to Gustave (1, 220), with Hannon's slowness at the Aegates Islands and crucifixion recalls the earlier appearances of Hannon at this time of the year in earlier episodes. His visit to the Mercenary camp on 15-16 May/November 241 BC might be seen as an attempt to expunge the memory of his defeat at the Aegates Islands by a ruse against the Barbarians, and his choice of a time for the Battle of Utica as an attempt to avenge the humiliation of his expulsion by the Barbarians on that 16 May/November 241. Unfortunately, like the Talleyrand who was as famous for his legendary slowness in processing ministerial documents as he was for his cupidity and corruptibility, Hannon takes longer than he expected to arrive at Utica, and Flaubert inserts a joke at the expense of Hannon/ Talleyrand by having his own chronology increase the gap afforded by Hannon's preparations and travelling time by six months, so that the ij-18 May/November 241 BC of the battle suddenly becomes a 77-/5 November 241/May 240. Hannon's death two years later shows remnants of Talleyrand's green dressing-gown in the green strips of decomposing flesh that hang from his wrists (1, 790). The day which is 7/77/18/ig May/November 238 BC makes Autharite's statement about fraternity coincide with the reestablishment of the marshalate on ig May 1802 and the creation of the Legion d'Honneur on ig May 1804: the phalanx
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which Spendius is always trying to activate as the source of his shared strength with Matho is that same band of brothers, based on the Treize and on twenty-six Napoleonic marshals, that Deslauriers and Dussardier urge on Frederic in ESn (i, 705, 746-7; 11, 64, 93, 105). The redheaded Gaul, Autharite, whose death rattle seems 'un rugissement de colere' (1, 790) has all the hotheadedness which earned Ney the titles 'le Rougeaud' and 'le brave des braves'. It is Ney/Autharite who resents arrogant authority and who invokes fraternity with his dying breath. Fraternity is amazingly alive and well in Flaubert's novel: the Barbarians show an impressive solidarity throughout, and this cohesiveness, based on personal friendship, is revealed by the relationship between Matho and Spendius, as compared with that between Napoleon and Fouche. When Giscon reveals the false veteran as a slave through the scars on his shoulders on 10 June/December, Spendius is in trouble, as his shoulders bear the same marks on the night of 25-6 April/October (1, 713, 615). Like the Fouche whose status as a regicide made him fear France's return to a monarchy (SZ, 156), Spendius cannot allow a return to order which would reveal his status as a deserter who would face torture and death if returned to his Roman master. Spendius is twice described as profiting from or hoping to profit from disorder (1, 701, 703), and his eventually truthful account of his position during the journey to Sicca shows that he is aware that deserters must be returned to the Romans by the terms of the peace treaty (1, 701). It is through Flaubert's doubling of the linear chronology that submerged indications of cause and effect can be indicated: the six-month coincidence allows the narrator to convey appropriate pieces of information at the right time. Spendius' lateApril anguish reflects his knowledge that, since the consuls changed office in Rome on / May at that time, Lutatius had to complete peace negotiations by that date in order to secure the triumph he enjoyed on 4 October/21 December 241 BC. If the war had ended after / May, the triumph would have been awarded to the consul(s) of the ensuing consular year, so Spendius' relief on the evening of / May/November 241 BC reflects his awareness that, by that time, things must have been decided one way or
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the other. This relief is further indicated at the time of his death, when he experiences the certainty of a final liberation (i, 790). The intolerable amount of 'angoisse' and 'inquietude' experienced by individuals and groups in Salammbo refers to the constant sense of powerlessness in the face of unknown outcomes of the actions of others. The multiplication of time which makes Giscon's exposure of the false veteran occur on 10 August/June 241 BC also makes that date coincide with the date on which Fouche's arrest for terrorism was decreed on 10 August 1795; but Fouche was able to profit from the law's delay prevalent since Robespierre's downfall to slip into the shadows (SZ, 109), for night is his element, intrigue his sphere of action (ibid., 98), just as Spendius is not made for battles in the sun and can't stand the glare of torches at night (1, 746, 695). Fouche's three years in hiding after the order for his arrest parallel the three years Spendius' spends in the ergastulum (SZ, in; 1, 716), and Spendius' stratagem with the 'troupeau de pores' (1, 746) reflects Fouche's employment as a swineherd during the three years he spent out in the cold (SZ, 115). Fouche was a cold-blooded or bloodless creature, an eel or snake who had a power of planning in the dark and of burrowing underground (SZ, 12, 275, 292). Spendius compares himself to a viper who can wind between walls and lead Matho to underground sources of wealth (1, 699). Fouche always remained in the background, urging leader figures forward (SZ, 20); Spendius uses Autharite and Zarxas as his cat's paws and admits that it was he who pushed the Gaul in the opening scene (1, 746). What Matho doesn't realise is that Spendius is referring not only to Autharite's challenging Giscon but also to his encouragement of the rivalry between Matho and Narr'Havas over Salammbo's attentions. Just as Fouche encouraged Babeuf to take up Marat's half-discarded ideas concerning equality of property (SZ, 106-7), so Spendius encourages the Mercenaries to press for unworkable demands re 'leur solde'. Fouche knew that his voice was good enough for whispering, for instilling suspicion, that his talent was that of inciting to action by whispering into others' ears (SZ, 20, 106). Matho is as
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though awoken to the possibilities of action by the 'sifflement' of Spendius' voice; Spendius 'soufflait a Tun quelque parole, fournissait a l'autre un poignard' (1, 699, 714). Fouche's name is derived either from the fox or from vulgus (Long, 206, 235): his red hair and pallor (SZ, 114) seem the somatisation of his vulpine characteristics, just as his status as a regicide and the 'mitrailleur de Lyon' marked him out as permanently of the people rather than the monarchy. Spendius has a 'figure de chacaP (1, 746), and his status as Tancien esclave' makes him a permanent enemy of stability and order. His fear of recognition leads him to cover his diminutive body when in the company of the giant, bareheaded Matho below the walls of Carthage, and to define his relationship to Matho as that of master and slave. Matho and Spendius meet on the night of 2J-6 October; Napoleon and Fouche met in October 1799 after the Hero of the Pyramids returned to Paris on 16 October iygg. Matho is a solar hero, wearing the lionskin of Hercules/Samson/Melkarth; Fouche was the grey shadow creeping along in attendance upon Napoleon's resplendent figure (SZ, 164). Their relationship from the beginning was one of master and servant, but Fouche, who seemed so modest and subordinate, was really at work everywhere, manipulating the forces of his time (ibid., 140, 13). Though Spendius refers to Matho as 'Maitre', he is surprised when Matho, who is usually so easily led, decides to take command. Fouche's final survival strategy, after the restoration of the Bourbons, was to marry a much younger member of the old nobility, but this did not save him from legitimist perfidy (SZ, 306). Spendius encourages Autharite's efforts to suggest a marriage between Matho and Salammbo and creates the first serious rift between Carthaginians and Barbarians by insisting on marriages between Mercenaries and high-born Carthaginian virgins (1, 712). Twice only does Matho turn on Spendius, and then those outbursts of temper are brief: on the night of 25—6 June/December after the theft of the £aimph and on 26 December/June after the defeat at the Macar. These temper tantrums are those of Napoleon after the assassination attempt of the Rue Nic. aise on
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24 December 1800 when Napoleon blamed Fouche's Jacobin associates for the attentat which was royalist in origin (SZ, 157). The major difference between the relationships is that Spendius remains faithful to the idea of the phalanx mentioned three times on 26 December/June, as idea based on the notion that when one soldier is down and vulnerable, his other self is standing and attacking. This concept was lacking in the relationship between the three arch-intriguers, Napoleon, Fouche and Talleyrand, and the difference is reinforced by the fact that the brief contretemps between Matho and Spendius occur on 25-6 December, the dates given for Fouche's death, 25 December (AF, 390) and 26December 1820) (SZ, 326). Spendius' association with Fouche is emphasised by the latter date, for it is on the occasion of the defeat that he gives a full and open account of his stratagems and motivations. The inference to be drawn from this and from the coincidence of the deaths of Fouche/Spendius and Talleyrand/Hannon on 10 March/1 y May 238 BC is that if a similar candour had existed between the three key figures of the First Empire, its downfall might have been averted. What divided the three was the association of legitimacy with the Bourbons. The 'river of blood' which precluded Fouche's support for any form of entrenched legitimacy became a metaphor for the necessity of a similarly divisive factor to separate Napoleon and Talleyrand from any hopes of flourishing under a Restoration. Hence Talleyrand's advocacy of the murder of the Due d'Enghien and of the dethronement of the Spanish Bourbons. Hence, also, Napoleon's insistence that the former Bishop of Autun marry his mistress, a suspected British spy, on 10 September 1802 (Orieux, 287), a date which, through the multiplication of time announced via the fishbone calendar, becomes the day of Talleyrand's/Hannon's death, 10 March/September. The marriage of a bishop was a slap in the face of a monarchy based on Catholicism, and this explains the association of marriage and murder at the end of the novel. Marginalisation was tantamount to civil death under a regime which adhered to tradition, and while Talleyrand and Fouche were both discarded by the Bourbons, Talleyrand survived, even though he
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was always outmanoeuvred by Fouche under a regime based on 'merit'. Many of the temporal duplications of the novel produce historical parallels which divide the characteristics and dilemmas of historical models among its characters so that identity becomes a consistent inconsistency. The Hamilcar/ Napoleon who returned from Spain with a powerful sense of wrong against Fouche and Talleyrand enters Carthage on a 14/24 February/August, which places him in the position of Henri de Navarre on the night of 24 August 1572: that of a quasi-royal figure who has no choice but to take command, in Hamilcar's case, or to adopt Catholicism in Henri's (Miquel, 526). By superimposing Eloul on Schebat (G-M, 24) Flaubert makes the return of Hamilcar repeat the association of 14/24 February/March/1 April present in £"61 and MB, so that Hamilcar is accused of wanting to be king on the night of 14—15 February which duplicates Antony's failed attempt to offer Caesar the crown at the Lupercalia of 15 February, and on a date, 24 March, which saw the accession of Alexander I of Russia on the occasion of his father's murder (AF, 101). Since the date is also the 14 March of Henri's white plume at Ivry, the characteristics of powerful historical models cross boundaries of character. The riddle of how three suffetes can be two suffetes can be answered if two of them are the same 'person' in some sense. Such is the case with Giscon and Hannon, both of whom, along with the apostate High Priest, Schahabarim, represent aspects of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, Bishop of Autun, diplomat and freemason, despite his bishop's mitre (Orieux, 328). From his first appearance at the Mercenaries' banquet, Giscon is surrounded with religio-masonic trappings: a golden mitre, ivory baton, voluminous black cloak and necklace of blue stones (1, 696). Hannon is wearing an identical black cloak and blue-stone necklace on the occasion of his first appearance at the Mercenary camp at Sicca (1, 705). While Giscon is first referred to as a 'general' and Hannon as an 'ambassadeur' (1, 704), both are characterised as 'devot' and 'ruse', and by the
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time of Giscon's visit to the Mercenary camp below the walls of Carthage, both are suffetes. Though Giscon describes himself as Teternel adversaire du suffete Hannon', Spendius, in immediate opposition to both, warns the Libyans that 'Les deux suffetes sont d'accord!' (i, 713). It cannot be denied that the visits of the two suffetes to the Mercenaries produce a similar effect, even though Hannon adopts a high-handed approach and Giscon tries for a tribune's role (1, 713), an appropriate effort on a date, 10 December/June, which coincides with the beginning of the official year of the Roman tribuniplebis on 10 December (OCD, 193). Yet while Giscon
cuts a quasi-mystical figure at first sight, Hannon is monstrous: consumed by cune lepre pale', he has an 'impassible' face and is cocooned in sheepskins and mummy-wrappings meant to ease the sufferings caused by 'sa difformite' (1, 704-5). Talleyrand also liked to surround himself with protective fabrics as a psychological buffer against a fall similar to the one which produced his deformity in infancy (Orieux, 439, 496), and the difficulty of perambulation associated with Hannon's appearance first concerns the twelve Negroes who become entangled in the paraphernalia of the camp and then moves to Hannon's efforts to stand: 'il posa ses pieds par terre, en chancelant'; 'il se balanga lourdement, d'une jambe sur l'autre' (1, 705). Hannon's 'lenteur' is mentioned repeatedly: the Mercenaries know that it was his slowness that lost the Battle of the Aegates Islands (1, 705), and Hamilcar agrees with them in his private thoughts (1, 729). Hannon's 'lenteur' makes him arrive later than he had planned for the Battle of Utica, and the heavy manoeuvring of his troops is a source of mirth to the Barbarians, who tell him to sit down (1, 725). At the same time, Hannon is a bureaucratic expert who insists that everything be registered in writing, and no one is his equal in administrative experience (1, 723). Yet Hannon's quasi-comical heaviness is sinister: his so-called 'clemence' with regard to the prisoners of war from Hecatompyle was really 'cupidite', because he sold those captives for profit (1, 705). Sinister, too, was 'Talleyrand's tortoise-like delay in executing orders' which became 'legendary' (Orieux, 193), for the foreign minister/ambassador requir-
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ed the grease of bribery before the administrative wheels could be set in motion. The dreadful bodily deterioration traced in Hannon throughout Salammbo is a kind of death-in-life, and the same physical characteristics were noted repeatedly in Talleyrand's case from middle age onwards: he was compared to a 'living corpse5 (Orieux, 233), a ghost (251), an Angora cat (252), a death mask (293), 'a corpse, not stinking as yet' (425), a walking death's head (553), 'the limping Mephistopheles' (554), Astaroth (560), a dead lion (574), 'Impenitent Judas' (600), 'limping Proteus' (601), a 'death's head overlaid with parchment' (608), 'a sated old vulture' (619). Not surprisingly, Giscon's impressive physical appearance does not last long after his imprisonment by the Mercenaries in the pit of filth: by the time the Mercenaries have Hamilcar pinned down after the Battle of the Macar, Giscon and his fellow prisoners have ulcers just like Hannon's; like Hannon, they resemble mummies in torn shrouds, and Giscon (1, 750) has to endure the added indignity of wearing a hippopotamus-hide crown devised by Autharite. Just as Hannon is compared to a hippopotamus by the narrator (1, 726), to a rhinoceros playing in its own dung and an elephant afraid of the sea by Hamilcar (1, 731) and finally to a marine monster just before his death (1, 790), so Giscon begins to take on the characteristics of Behemoth, if not also those of Leviathan (Cle7i, 54-5). Hannon is associated especially with the elephant: he spends what the narrator deems a justified amount of time on the preparation of the war machines, but is said to lose time outfitting the elephants (1, 723). When, on the iy May of the Battle of Utica which is also the date of Talleyrand's death, he is thought to be dead for a moment (1, 725), he suddenly reappears on an elephant, and is particularly grieved at the loss of the elephants after Spendius' 'troupeau de pores' stratagem (1, 727). Talleyrand, also, was frequently compared to an elephant because of his hydrotherapeutic habit of snorting water through his nose for a good quarter-hour and because of his shoe shaped like an elephant's foot (Orieux, 11, 496, 518), but there is more to the comparison than that. As a combination of all the animals with which the
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Biblical Behemoth was compared, and as a Leviathan, Hannon is the great terrestrial and aquatic monster, the enemy in both elements. The question remains, then, as to why the Carthaginians should love Hannon more than Hamilcar (i, 731), why they should continue to entrust him with office and command in the light of his incompetence and jealousy on the battlefield and his overwhelming greed and corruptibility. The answer in Hannon's case is that his very drawbacks are his strengths: because his vices are on the surface, the Great Council fear Hannon less than they fear Hamilcar, and use Hannon as a counterforce to Hamilcar's imperial ambitions. It is Hannon who accuses Hamilcar of wanting to be king at the time of the Lupercalia when Mark Antony was later to offer Julius Caesar the crown. This highly comic scene, throughout the night of 14-15 February 239 BC, re-enacts one of the many stormy scenes between Napoleon and Talleyrand. Like all the great heroes, Hamilcar and Napoleon have uncontrollable outbursts of temper which might just be more directed than they appear. During a tirade, Napoleon would throw down his famous black beaver hat and stamp on it (Cronin, 183—4); Hamilcar takes off his impressive tiara and hurls it theatrically to the ground. Talleyrand betrayed Napoleon by not going to Constantinople to placate the Turks so that they would not interfere with the Egyptian expedition which Talleyrand financed in the hope that Napoleon would be killed. Hence, ironically, Hannon accuses Hamilcar of not meeting him at the Aegates Islands when Hannon's own maritime expedition was meant to relieve Hamilcar at Eryx. Hamilcar's characterisation of Hannon as a rhinoceros playing in its own dung (1, 731) is reminiscent of Napoleon's cshit in a silk stocking' characterisation of Talleyrand. There is further irony in Hannon's directive 'Moins d'arrogance, Barca!' when it is Hannon's highhanded treatment of the Mercenaries that contributed to the disorder that has furthered Spendius' opportunistic ambitions. Hannon is part of the rich comedy of character that follows the Fouches and Talleyrands when they act in tandem with and/or against one another and others. Hannon in his bathtub
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at Utica, not letting concern for his personal comforts interfere with his love for the 'chose publique' as he dictates an inaccurate and self-congratulatory account of a victory soon to be overturned by a herd of flaming pigs, is so incensed at the Barbarians' audacity in humiliating him at Sicca that he decides to kill the captives instead of selling them. What a sacrifice! Another set of answers to the question of why figures so widely reviled as Talleyrand should continue to gain high office is afforded through the characterisation of Giscon, who is, like Hannon, 'un homme devot, ruse, ... un vrai Carthaginois' (1, 723). Giscon appears to be far more principled than Hannon, for while Hannon shares Talleyrand's taste for high living, Giscon's tent contains only 'les choses indispensables a la vie', among them 'une pierre noire tombee de la lune' (1, 714-15). The hint that Giscon's Spartanism may be theatrical is reinforced by Hamilcar's caressing of his own collection of these moonstones on his return to Carthage, and the narrator's mock-naive statement that only people of higher understanding worship these abaddirs disguises an erudite joke. Suetonius claims that moonstones were valued by Domitian because they reflected everything that happened behind his back (p. 310). The Giscon who ordered the Sacred Legion to kill the innocent Balearic slingers, and who sent Narr'Havas to Sicca to kill Matho, is well aware of the need to defend himself against those who are supposed to be supporting him. Although Giscon commands as much love and respect from the Carthaginians and the Barbarians as Hamilcar does, he is as crafty and opportunistic as Hannon or Spendius when it comes to gaining his objectives. When Narr'Havas signals Hannon on 22 November/May after the Battle of Utica, Hannon fails to understand the signal, simply because Narr'Havas has mistaken Hannon for Giscon - not because they are of similar appearance but because the Numidian King, himself an arch-intriguer, sees no difference between the two suffetes in terms of their methods. On the day, 22 May, of Talleyrand's funeral after the embalming of his body by the Egyptian method (Orieux, 653), Narr'Havas cannot distinguish one mummy from the other. Hannon's death on iy November/May/10 March/September
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makes the moment, three months later, when the final battle is decided // June/December 238 BC and Matho's capture by Narr'Havas follows on 12 June/December 238 BC. The death of the last Mercenary in the Defile de la Hache on the following day, 13 June/December 238 BC, is thus quite accurately described as occurring three years after the imprisonment of Giscon with which the war began. The death of Hannon/Talleyrand on a date which is also 10 September/March has further implications for the marriage/ execution with which the war and the novel end. Because of Narr'Havas' inexplicable stratagem, which delivers Hannon up to the Mercenaries, the date is also 20-1 September/March, date of d'Enghien's execution on the night of 20-1 March 1804, so Hannon's death coincides with Talleyrand's plot to place the 'river of blood' between Napoleon and the Bourbons in response to Napoleon's placing of a 'river of mud' between the former Bishop of Autun and the legitimists by forcing Talleyrand to marry Catherine Noel Worlee, Mme Grand, on 10 September 1802 (Orieux, 287). Napoleon wanted to bind Talleyrand to him forever and to alienate him from the church and the Bourbons through this alliance with a suspected English spy and notorious courtesan (ibid., 291). Hannon's death on a 'wedding day' which is also 21 September/March has further marital implications, thanks to the manoeuvres of Narr'Havas/Alexander. 21 September 1808 was the date of Talleyrand's arrival at Erfurt, six days before Napoleon's arrival for the meeting with the Czar. This period gave Talleyrand the opportunity to sabotage Napoleon's plans for an alliance through marriage with Alexander's sister (Orieux, 356), so the coincidence of Hannon's death with those of Spendius, Autharite and Zarxas through Narr'Havas' stratagem indicates that the downfall of so many conspirators and turncoats is related to the habit of intrigue which divides supposed allies in such a way that an outsider is able to profit from the complicated web of manoeuvre and countermanoeuvre. Polybius emphasised the lack of unity in the Mercenary forces as the root cause of their failure, and Flaubert supports this view by placing emphasis on the three causes of
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Napoleon's downfall as defined by Talleyrand: Spain, Russia and the Pope (Orieux, 534). Yet Talleyrand himself had urged Napoleon to commit those very crimes/blunders (ibid., 300, 333? 348). Much of the comedy in Flaubert's treatment of the Talleyrand figure derives from the symbolism of the bestiaries. Hannon is twice associated with the ass, first when he escapes from Sicca and second when he reports the loss of two asses at the crossing of the Macar. The ass is slow and resists commands (McCulloch, 92), as well as being a symbol of the satanic Set whose wounding on 16 May in the Egyptian calendar (G, 1, 205) coincides with Hannon's expulsion from Sicca. That the rhinoceros is Tennemi irreductible de l'elephant' (Cirlot, 332) indicates the contradictions in Talleyrand's character, his difficulty in coinciding with himself, for the elephant is the ccosmophore', 'la puissance royale', intelligence, force, stability and the weight of responsibilities (ibid., 174-5). The Dictionnaire des Idees Regues summarises the unjustified, and the justifiable, criticism directed at 'TALLEYRAND (LE PRINGE DE): S'indigner contre' (n, 314). This diplomat and administrator, who saved the territorial and spiritual integrity of France, was also an apostate priest who engineered the marriage between Napoleon and Marie-Louise of Austria, between the Minotaur whose myth Anne Green (pp. iO4ff.) finds throughout Salammbo and in its 'vulnerable' human victim. Schahabarim's name expresses his affinity with the Taille-rang (Orieux, xii) who could never adapt himself to the priestly vocation which was also a disinheritance. The schizoid, cutting element in the High Priest's name (Long, 63-6) provides a fitting appellation for a castrated priest torn between the old religion and the new, between monarchy and empire, in neither of which he can believe. What first drew this reader's attention to the possibility that Napoleon is represented in Salammbo through the figures of Hamilcar and Matho is the coincidences surrounding two 25 Junes: the first occurs when Matho and Narr'Havas form an alliance on the night of 25-6 June and the second when Hamilcar crosses the Macar on 24-5 June. What would seem to
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have drawn Flaubert to the Mercenary War is the number of parallels with Napoleon's career. For Chateaubriand, Napoleon was a poet in action, the man of two existences who severely condemned his own political conduct on two counts: the Spanish and Russian wars. Chateaubriand (p. 325) adds the execution of the Due d'Enghien and the imprisonment of the Pope to this list, and the imprisonment and execution of Giscon bear some resemblances to those events. In addition, Matho's 'infatuation' with Narr'Havas bears resemblances to Napoleon's with Alexander, and it must be remembered that Tilsit, conveyed in Salammbo through the tent feast/alliance, was the prerequisite for the Peninsular War, and led to the 2-3 May 1808, the crucified lions and the Baylen surrender and its aftermath which bear so many resemblances to the Defile episode. Even the novel's beginning and ending, on a 13 April which is so many other dates as well through the presence of Narr'Havas and some tinkering with the moon, are indications of the Napoleonic legacy to Flaubert's generation through the fact that Chateaubriand gives 13—27 April 1821 for the dictation of Napoleon's will (p. 340). The 27 October/April of the innocent Baleares' arrival in Carthage is also the date, 27 October 1807, of the coincidence of the signing of the secret treaty of Fontainebleau regarding Spain and the arrest of Ferdinand by his father for Ferdinand's offer of an alliance by marriage with Napoleon's august family (Oman, 12). The subject of the particular form of looting which is sacrilege, etymologically the stealing of sacred things, is a repeated motif in Salammbo. From the eating of the Barca fish through the impounding of Giscon's body to the theft of the £aimph, the motif recurs, and it is the crucified lions on the road to Sicca which show that the mercantile Carthaginians will not tolerate thefts from outsiders. On at least two occasions, looting was the crime which brought about the downfall of French armies. In Spain at Baylen, one of the factors in the surrender of Dupont's and Vedel's troops was the fact that the leaders were promised that they would be allowed to depart with their plunder wagons. The Spanish justified their failure to observe
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the terms of the surrender on the grounds that the French were resented for the plundering of Cordoba, a name associated with St Julien's mercenary army's feats in Flaubert's later legende. And who does not know the image of the Grande Armee limping home from Moscow weighed down with loot from the capital of Holy Mother Russia? The novelist's own association with Napoleon's career is conveyed through the dates of Salammbo. The war begins with the strangling of the interpreters and imprisonment of Giscon on a 12-13 December, Flaubert's double birthday, which recurs at the moment of Matho's capture and the death of the last Barbarian in the Defile. As the lion calmly tears at the Barbarian's entrails then roars out his great yawn of boredom, the novelist indicates to what extent the Desert Lion, Napoleone, dominates and disposes of the lives of all who live in his shadow. The imposing figure of the hero casts his thrall over all the greatest thinkers of his age as easily as on the minds of simple soldiers: it is Spendius who expresses the mystique of Hamilcar, with his red cloak and eagle gaze (1, 746), and it is that same red cloak which lures the Barbarians into the Defile. When Hamilcar's former troops see him in the morning, warming the hearts of his men with that same gaze and presence (1, 749), the attraction is equally strong for the Mercenaries, even though they have him trapped and at their mercy. Giscon, himself a mystic figure of imposing proportions, defines the place where Hamilcar happens to be as a 'lieu saint' (1, 761), so whether the witness is a politician like Spendius/Fouche or an awe-inspiring figure like Giscon, the attraction is always there. Flaubert's definition of the relationship between the poet of action and the writer is more complicated than that, however. It is the red cloak and the 'troupeau de boeufs' (1, 783) which lure the Mercenaries to their doom in the Defile. Flaubert's favourite image for the hard slog of the writer's vocation is placed beside the warrior's mantle to form a dual lure for the uninitiated. If the conqueror is dangerous to the writer, the reverse is also true. Spendius, who believes that Fortune favours politicians, takes credit for starting the Inexpiable War by claiming that he did not want the Interpreters to be able to
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speak. Since the emblems of the Interpreters are a sphinx and a parrot, it is evident that their skill in interpretation is involved with more than simply being able to preclude Spendius' tradittore/traduttore form of deception. As well as repeating, the Legion of Interpreters is able to solve and pose riddles, and that is the writer's function (i, 746, 713). Emma Bovary's death provided a twin definition of the derivation of phalange/phalanx: whether we see it as the Blind Man's gros baton [Petit Larousse) or the spider's web of the OED,
both images are present at Emma's last moments. It was Napoleon who compared his reign with Diocletian's, in which a military network was presided over by the Emperor's all-seeing eyes (Herold, xxvii). It is Hamilcar who feels that his ancestors provide him with an invisible network linking him with the centre of the world, and who dreams of the eternal empire of the Barcas. Fraternity is an important theme in Salammbo: its central symbolism concerns a set of oppositions between the mat Ibaton contained in the name Mdtho and a web or textile conveyed through the outrageous pun sale-lambeau. The opposition taut/slack is an important distinction in this cluster of images, and indicates that the 'phallocracy' implied in the motif of the Cabires is the basis of a military rule. The image of Tank stretched over the world, pouring out her light like milk and her night like a mantle, indicates a further relationship between Tanit, Titan and Tente which is suggested in the final scene, when 'Carthage etait comme convulsee dans le spasme d'une joie titanique' (1, 797). Because the military regime denies motherhood, there are no mothers in Salammbo: there are nurses like Taanach and Narr'Havas' who sends him warning at the moment of greatest danger, but the mother-child bond is quite absent, and that this is not a minor omission is indicated by the timing of the sacrifice to Moloch on 4 April. Ovid's comments on that date show that the mother has a way of avenging denial, just as Salammbo's story of Melkarth emphasises the mother/queen Leiathana's revenge. Ovid associates the Megalensia with Rhea/Cybele's saving of Jupiter from Saturn's voracity, and Moloch '(traduisez Saturne)' (11, 752) seems to be the incarna-
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tion of 'womb envy': 'The Mother is absent; ... seek the Mother' (Fasti, 207). It is not such a great leap from the figure of the 'Corsican ogre' who claimed 'Apres tout, c'est un ventre que j'epouse' (Turnbull, 53), to the Moloch/Minotaur figure (Green, 1046°.), especially since the 27 March/4 April coincidence occasioned by the lavatio makes the sacrifice to Moloch occur on the date of Napoleon's frenzied rush towards consummation with his Austrian Pasiphae on 27 March 1810 (Turnbull, 52). Giscon's decapitation on this same 27 March/September, which commemorates Jupiter's castration of Saturn, indicates that the female element will not be denied. The presence of the Legion Sacree in Salammbo has further implications for the theme of Napoleonic fraternity. The original Theban Sacred Legion, on which the Carthaginian one is based, was a homosexual band. Under the Epaminondas admired by the Mercenaries, it was the first military formation to break the hegemony of the Spartan phalanx, conveyed in Salammbo as 'des phalanges a la spartiate' (1, 705). Because Napoleon-as-Matho is presented largely through his relationships with his complementary figure, Spendius, and with the epicene Narr'Havas/Alexander, the question of relationships between males receives careful scrutiny. Just as in BeP, where the beginning of friendship is announced as a 'coup de foudre', so in Salammbo, camaraderie is portrayed as a complex combination of amorous and rival elements. The red cloak is a symbol of the Spartan military machine (1, 763). Hamilcar's red-cloaked return (1, 728) signals the resumption of a Spartan regime, and Matho's copying of the wearing of the red cloak at the time of the seduction in the tent (1, 758) indicates that both sides have assumed a style of rule which leads directly to the sacrifice of the red cloak of Moloch (1,780). ^ The baton-voile/mdt-toile motif expressed through 'une tente profonde, avec un mat dresse au milieu' (1, 758) finally becomes the image of the 'trente croix demesurees', 'construites avec les mats de leurs tentes attaches bout a bout' and bearing the 'lambeaux verdatres' of 'cette masse sans nom' which is Hannon's body (1, 790). The crucified Mercenaries are compared to
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des naufrages qui meurent dans la mature d'un navire' (i, 790), so the network which was meant to be the institution of a cohesive regime uniting all its members has become a mere weapon of punishment and tyranny. The web belongs more to the female than to the male. Whether the individual is a politician beloved of Fortune or a simple soldier endowed with the warrior's fiery temper, betrayal and self-betrayal are inevitable in the world of action and intrigue, as is indicated by the repeated association of Autharite and the Gauls with desertion in Salammbo (1, 724, 732, 750, 782). Ney's desertion of Napoleon, then of Louis XVIII, is the basis of Flaubert's swipe at French fickleness. That the 7 May/ December death of Autharite/Ney coincides with Napoleon's first meeting with Talleyrand on 7 December iygy (Orieux, 203) is not surprising in view of the fact that the relationship between the soldier/emperor and the priest/diplomat was often described as a 'marriage' and their rupture as a 'divorce'. That 'divorce', as Talleyrand termed it, was caused by the Treaty of Pressburg of 26 December 1803 (ibid., 333), the anniversary of Matho's burning of his handprinted tent on the date of the alliance with Narr'Havas/Alexander and of Fouche's death in 1820 (SZ, 326). That 26 December 'divorce' thereby coincides with Napoleon's divorce from Josephine on 16 December i8og (AF, 381). When Napoleon/Hamilcar joins Narr'Havas and Salammbo in 'fian^ailles indissolubles' (1, 762) on the shared birthday of Caroline and Joachim Murat, 25 March, the intersection of the axes of desire and power becomes explicit. The marital alliances with which Narr'Havas is repeatedly associated are the point at which the amorous and the political coincide. Yet Narr'Havas' power to attract both men and women indicates that military and political alliances can often be based on the physical and emotional attractions between men. Both alliances and marriages are forms of imprisonment for Flaubert, as is indicated by the marriage/murder with which Salammbo ends. The foregoing has indicated the combination of simplicity and complication in the chronological structure of Salammbo. The narrator provides a set of indices which show that the war begins with the imprisonment of Giscon on 13 June/December
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241 BC, an opening point mentioned twice (1, 714, 750). The end of the war is similarly defined twice as coinciding with Salammbo's marriage to Narr'Havas (1, 782, 788), so that the point at which the last Barbarian dies in the Defile de la Hache, after the war has lasted three years (1, 793), must occur four months before that marriage /execution according to Polybius' definition of three years four months for the duration of the war. Such a period situates the capture of Matho at 12 June/ December 238, the death of the last Barbarian in the Defile on 13 June/December 238 and the marriage/execution on 13 October 238/April 237 BC.
The simplicity of that structure is complicated first by the temporal indices Gothot-Mersch (pp. 22-6) finds in the ebauckes: the theft of the £amph occurs in Tammouz, Eloul and Tibby; Hamilcar's return in Schebar and Eloul; the Battle of the Macar in Eloul and Tibby and the heat of summer in both Eloul and Sivan. In addition, the notation '2 ans' for the moment preceding the Battle of the Macar shows that the war is already two years old at a point which leaves only one year for all the events between the Battle of the Macar and the death of the Barbarians in the Defile. Hence, some form of temporal manipulation is necessary if the events in between are to be fitted into a one-year time span. It seems reasonable to assume that the legendary slowness of Hannon/Talleyrand, which was responsible for the extension of the period to the '2 ans' point, should be used in reverse to save periods of time, especially since Hannon's appearances are associated with everything being overturned and confused, 'renverse, bouleverse' (1, 707, 727? 789-90)The simple substitution of Eloul for Tammouz/Tibby has the effect of associating the beginning of the war with a 10-14 June/December which is also a 10-14 February/August, and the theft of the £aimph with a 24-5 June/December which is also a 24-5
February/August, so that the point four months after the death of the Barbarians in the Defile occurs on a 13 June/December which makes Salammbo's marriage to Narr'Havas and Matho's execution occur on the same date as the beginning of the war. Yet that date is also 13 October/April, so Narr'Havas' presence
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produces a discrepancy of 10-12 days which makes the date of the final chapter 23-5 October/April, time of the opening banquet. By the same token, the marriage/execution occurs on 23-5 June/December also, so the theft of the £aimph, beginning of the tent alliance and crossing and Battle of the Macar are also equated with the moment of the novel's final chapter — a coincidence acknowledged by the references in that chapter to people who have been waiting in the Square of Khamon since the previous evening, and to the impending prostitution which is to occur throughout the night following the marriage/execution (1, 794, 795). As though this were not sufficiently complicated already, the narrator's 'error' concerning the appearance of a first visible crescent which is 'really' a full moon adds 14/15 days to the time taken by the events of the last chapter, so that the marriage/ execution of 27/28 October/April is also an anniversary of the arrival and slaughter of the scapegoat Baleares on 27-8 April/ October 241 BC. Since this is also the date of Flaubert's celebration of St Polycarpe on a date, 2J April, which is also la saintFloribert (AF, 136), the author whose first novel was prosecuted/ persecuted by the Second Imperial Regime accuses himself of a similar somnolence in the face of danger created by the crimes of others. In the end, it was Napoleon who defined the mystery of the £a'imph when he observed that we look at all things through a gilded veil that makes them appear glittering and gay. Little by little, the veil thickens until the point is reached when it becomes almost black (Herold, 272). As Spendius hangs on the cross flanked by the A to Z of the Grande Armee, Autharite and Zarxas, he remembers the lions on the road to Sicca. Autharite the Gaul's reply shows the end point of fraternity in death and dismemberment (1, 790). While the Petit Chaperon rouge motif of MB showed the danger lurking within French revolutionary/imperial ideology, in Salammbo Spendius is the incarnation of turmoil. Flaubert relates his name to the spondelspendein or libations which symbolise the armistice, peace treaty or end to hostilities in the ancient world (Burkert, 70-1). From Spendius' first toast to Salammbo's raising of the cup from which she
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will be separated by death at her wedding (1, 695, 797), every toast remains undrunk in Salammbo, indicating that the spirit of mischief/discord is an essential element in martial fraternity. The truce symbolised by the spendein remains as inaccessible as the cups of the Legion Sacree, the apotheosis of brotherhood in the novel. Salammbo\ temporal structure reveals a Flaubert skilled in temporal lore, as is evidenced by the 'belier noir qui reculait' (1, 700) symbolising the precession of the equinoxes at the opening banquet, and who sees History as the blending of private and public forces. The writer as citizen, worker and member of several families extending from the nuclear through the national/racial to the human is a major subject of this foray into the third century BG, and the presence of an ouroboros, the tail or remnant, at the sacrifice of Matho indicates that what Hamilcar saw as the head/beginning of a great imperial enterprise was merely a stage in the fortune of a truncated dynasty whose glory remains as a reminder of the coincidence of all ends and beginnings through the eternal repetitions of human behaviour.
CHAPTER 5
Two-timing in 'UEducation sentimentale'*
'Le 15 septembre 1840': Louise Revoil Colet's thirtieth birthday is writ large at the beginning of a book whose two-volume first edition appeared in November 1869 bearing the date 1870 (11, 8). If Rosanette 'devenait vieille' at the age of twenty-nine (n, 127), then thirty is old enough: in 1870, Louise Colet would be sixty. Hortense Baslin's first act of prostitution at the age of fifteen occurred at the Croix-Rousse (11, 128); Louise Revoil was living in the Croix-Rousse at the age of fifteen (D45, 142). Yet the 'Muse's' vituperative brand of revenge is not Flaubert's, as the novel's chronological structure shows: a continuous narrative from 75 September 1840 to 5 December I8JI is followed by a double coda which repeats the encounters of the novel's first two chapters, this time on 22 March 1867 and 22 November 1868 respectively. The events of the impossibly situated 5 December 1851 cause a flight in time and space which cannot efface the impact of the day that is hors temps. On 5 December 1835, Louise Revoil married Hippolyte Colet; on 5 December 1851, Louise Roque married Charles Deslauriers (n, 159). Where there is vengeance, there is also homage. Over and against efforts at subverting time, there are the incontrovertible facts of time. The tension in ESn is created by the massive forces of temporal manipulation and symbolisation set against the resistant immutability of dates which cannot be denied. Using the terminology of the novel's end, we shall examine the tension between 'logical'/ligne droite time and the 'sentimental' time of 'mille choses secondaires' (11, 162). *
Unless otherwise stated, historical dates for the period from the beginning of 1848 to the end of 1851 are derived from the chronology provided in A83, 238-42. 130
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On 16 November 1840, when Frederic first visits the Rue d'Anjou, Mile Boutron cannot be cla jolie Mme Dambreuse que citaient les journaux' (11, 15), since she was not married to M. Dambreuse at that time. On / j September 1844, when Frederic sees the couple for the first time, Mme Dambreuse is 'ni laide ni jolie' (11, 40). The Boutron-Dambreuse wedding occurred during the winter of 1841-2, at about the time that Baptiste Martinon, wearing a 'toilette de marie' (n, 29), dined with them. If anyone had waited for answers to the frivolous questions that were put to Martinon at Frederic's soiree, something interesting might have emerged. On 13 January 1847, at her Wednesday reception, Mme Dambreuse announces that her husband's niece is about to be brought into the household (11, 55). On 12 February 1831, she claims that this occurred at the end of 'cinq ans de menage' (11, 145). The beginning of the marriage must have been some time around 13 January 1842, approximately fourteen months after Frederic's visit. The novel's first time loop occurs in its third chapter, when the visiting cards of / January 1841 are ignored. Rejection by the Dambreuse milieu sends the narration back, via the pluperfect tense, to Frederic's progress with the Arnoux milieu since 1840, then forward to what is described on // December 1841, the eve of Arnoux's departure for Belgium, as six months earlier (n, 21): that is, as // June 1841, fifteenth anniversary of the death of Antoine Revoil, Louise Colet's father (C1686, 28). The parallel between 11—12 June and 11-12 December in 1841 associates the mourning band of // June with the commissioning of an artistic fraud on // December. Louis Napoleon, who saw his uncle for the last time before Waterloo for a brief moment on the night of // June 1813, profited from his friend Persigny's creation of the fiction that Napoleon passed the mantle of succession to his nephew on 12 June 1815, on the date of the departure for Waterloo in Belgium (Brodsky, 12). Frederic's relief upon learning, on 12 June 1841, that Marie is not dead (11, 17) ends the time loop with his forgotten purchase from UArt industriel. Frederic has 'bought the fiction' of a mock mourning staged at a theatrical venue, and is able to quote the
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exact date of the Palais-Royal shock at Fontainebleau, seven years later (11, 128). Immediately after the time loop, the narration returns to the end of winter/February 1841 and rushes through spring, the exams, vacation and the shift of address from the Rue SaintHyacinthe to the Quai Napoleon which marks the rentree of November 1841 (11, 17). By this means, the events of 1841 are narrated twice, but the period which coincides with the conception of Adolphe Schlesinger on / April 1841 is no less enigmatic for that: in the second version, Frederic is 'moins triste' in spring; in the time loop, he begins a Venetian novel entitled Sylvio, le fils du pecheur whose heroine is Antonia/Mme Arnoux (n, 16). Sylvio is a synonym of Schlesinger (ECS, 32), and Antonia is 'inestimable' (CY, 142). How there can possibly be nasturtiums and sweet peas in a window box in the Rue de Fleurus on Wednesday 1 December 1841 (11, 19) is a mystery whose solutions are thematic and structural. Hussonnet wants to interpret street demonstrations as youthful fetes de printemps with limited political relevance and effectuality (11, 18). Louis-Philippe's belief that Parisians would never stage a revolution in winter led to his being taken by surprise in February 1848, so it is interesting that Hussonnet should insinuate that he himself might be a police spy, especially in view of the inexplicable releases of Senecal and Deslauriers later in the novel. Frederic's first encounter with Hussonnet and Dussardier near the Pantheon occurs exactly a decade before 'la vente de madame Arnoux' (11, 157) on / December 1851, and later chronological manipulations will create a coincidence of 7-5 May/December.
Dussardier's loss of the carton is equivalent to a loss of metier, and the shattering of his pipe is the loss of a 'chef-d'oeuvre' of three years' gestation (11, 19). / December 1830 saw the disastrous premiere of Musset's Nuit venitienne and a scathing reaction from audience and critics that send Musset reeling home to his Armchair Theatre. / December 1836 saw the appearance in the Revue de Paris of a mutilated version of the penultimate instalment of Madame Bovary, despite the author's objections. / December 1803 saw the decree making the worker's livret manda-
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tory throughout France (Soboul, 111, 77), and Frederic will complain, in May 1850, that the livret is still in the hands of the bosses (11, 142). Dussardier's lost carton and pipe, in anticipating by an exact decade the loss of Marie's Renaissance casket and the dismemberment of her body/home/wardrobe, show that the fates of the worker, the writer and the beloved woman are intimately linked. Hussonnet's allusion to the Bonapartist Louvel's assassination of the Due de Berry on 13 February 1820 (NW, 138) signals a doubling of time: since both February and December were the Roman year's end at different times, and since the 1/12 December calendar change makes Dussardier's arrest coincide with Flaubert's birth on 12/13 December 1821, the customary coincidence of 12/13 in Flaubert's texts creates a coincidence of 1112113 December/February which for Flaubert equates birth and a threatened vocation. Six months after 12/13 February is 12/13 August, time of Hercules/Melkarth's festivals in Rome (Scullard, 171): as 'une sorte d'Hercule' (11, 18), Dussardier is a saviour, while Hercules/Melkarth devoured children in Salammbo. Chateaubriand's description of Louvel raises the question of whether Bonapartism was another form of Moloch worship, as Dussardier's appearance a decade before the 1851 coup indicates. Frederic's first visit to the Rue de Choiseul occurs on Thursday 6 January 1842. Among the 'choses du jour' discussed on Friday 7 January 1842 is Rossini's Stabat Mater, which was performed for the first time that evening. Maurice Schlesinger, who had published a version of the Stabat completed by Tadolini without owning the rights to it, offered the subscribers to his journal the chance to hear this version on Sunday 26 December 1841 (G-G, 74-5). Rossini's completed version was the one presented on 7 January 1842 (11, 2617), and Schlesinger lost the subsequent court case concerning this fraud. The Jew Isaac who signs masters' names to imitations (11, 21) performs a similar function to Tadolini's, and Arnoux's posters for the painting exhibition (11, 23) might just as well be advertising the performance of the Stabat - but which one? Jules Burrieu, the painter present at UArt industriel in December
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1841 and at the 6 January dinner (n, 20, 25), has a surname equivalent to Rossini's (Long, 21). On the Ville-de-Montereau, a little girl asks to see the music and Frederic pays (11, 10). The novel announces itself as the answer to a little girl's request, and the only autographed novel by Flaubert which is missing from those sent to the Schlesingers is ESn (D47, 156). The dating of the first dinner in the Rue de Choiseul to 6 January 1842 allows other frauds and substitutions to be revealed. The two consecutive days on which Frederic visits UArt industriel and becomes aware of Arnoux's fraudulent activities are 28-g December 1841. Frederic writes letters cancelling invitations to the rival's opening on 28 December 1841 and discovers, on 29 December 1841, that Marie does not live above the shop and that Arnoux and Isaac have defrauded Pellerin (11, 23). There are multiple jokes in Flaubert's pious fraud. Arnoux/Schlesinger is advertising the rival's genuine product rather than his own hybrid effort, since 26 December has passed, and Pellerin's bogus Bouchers take no time at all to produce, since they were commissioned on // December 1841 and sold by Isaac two weeks after Pellerin sold them to him (11, 23). This private joke on the part of a novelist who required a long gestation period for the elaboration of his own oeuvres d}art will be repeated on 13/23 March 1848, when it takes Pellerin no time at all to produce and sell his figure of the Republic (11, 115). The association of 2^-30 December with postponed invitations and artistic fraud is a crucial element in the events of December 1848/January 1849^ especially in view of Flaubert's substitution of 31 January for 2g January in connection with the trial of Madame
Bovary, where another 'pious fraud' occurred (11, 724). Deslauriers's letter announcing his 6 January arrival in Paris reaches Frederic on Saturday 1 January 1842, the day on which Adolphe Schlesinger was born. Deslauriers's letter is Frederic's New Year gift, and it announces something formerly desired which is given when desire has passed, since the Arnoux have supplanted Deslauriers in Frederic's affections by the time it arrives. And the pretext for the invitation to the Rue de Choiseul, Arnoux's trout from Geneva of 5 January 1842 (11, 24), is more of a red herring: it announces the absence of Adolphe's
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birth in the text, for no fish course is mentioned among the dishes at the dinner of 6 January 1842. The conception of Eugene, Mme Arnoux's child, will be postponed by almost two years in the novel, but his absence is filled by the Renaissance casket which is Arnoux's New Year's gift to Marie (n, 25), and this substitution for the New Year's gift that is Adolphe will continue to be associated with the year's beginning. Frederic observes that it has passed to Rosanette on / September 1847 (11, 102), and / September is the first day of the Byzantine year as well as the Synaxis of the Mother of God (Delaney, 639), a coincidence acknowledged through the presence in Rosanette's new apartment of 'une petite vierge byzantine a chape de vermeil' (11, 101). The remains of the previous night's festivities indicate that Rosanette and the 'Russian prince' have been celebrating New Year's Eve. When the casket passes to Mme Dambreuse on / December 1851, the December/January equivalence established in ESi means that it is New Year's Day once again. Frederic's argument with Deslauriers over the repetition of Arnoux's name occurs on 10 AND 14 June 1842 and is followed three weeks later (11, 30) by Marie's consultation with Balandard at the Palais de Justice on 1 AND 5 July 1842. Balandard was the master of ceremonies in Maurice Sand's marionette theatre at Nohant (Jacobs, 166134), and George Sand, like Flaubert, had two birthdays. Even after she discovered her real birthdate of / July 1804, she continued to celebrate it on 5 July, as her correspondence with Flaubert acknowledges (ibid., 39142). Deslauriers's quotation of lines from Victor Hugo's Lui on 10/14 June 1842 establishes an identity link between Napoleon, subject of the poem, and Arnoux, an association Frederic finds 'penible' (11, 30). 10 June 1848 saw the gathering in the Place de la Concorde of a great crowd who wanted to see Louis Napoleon take his seat in the Assembly. The future prince-president was absent: he had not left England, so the government's ordering of his arrest served only to make him a more 'intriguing' figure (Guedalla, 128-9). Balzac and Hugo, together with George Sand, are the literary figures who link the 10/14 June and the 1/3 July dates in
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ESn, through the space of three weeks which separates the quarrel over Arnoux's name from Marie's legal consultation with Balandard on the occasion of her last appearance in Paris before the absence - which was not occasioned by her mother's fictional illness, despite Arnoux's alibi (11, 31, 32). 5 July 1843 is the date on which Victor Hugo was caught enflagrantdelit with Leonie Biard in the passage Saint-Roch (JR, 103), an event dramatised in Balzac's Cousine Bette. Marie sees a lawyer on 5 July 1842, shortly before a scene in which Frederic could have caught Arnoux and Rosanette in similar circumstances to Hugo's. On the date which anticipates Balzac's death by three years, 18 August 1847, Marie will play the role of Adeline Fischer Hulot/Adele Foucher Hugo. Balzac, Hugo and George Sand are writers who made the borders between life and letters, between gossip and history, indistinct. After the failed examination of 5/75 August 1842, Hussonnet announces Arnoux's impending departure for Germany on 6116 August 1842 (n, 31); but Arnoux is very much in Paris and enjoying a rendezvous with Rosanette when the myopic Frederic breaks her parasol on Saturday 20 August 1842 (n, 31). Since 20 August 1807 was the date de base for theories concerning Napoleon's engendering of Louis Napoleon at Saint-Cloud (DD, 5), the broken parasol of the Rue de Choiseul is a pointer to the adulterous and incestuous nature of Bonapartist desire. Hussonnet's mention of Germany is an allusion to the j / / j August 1583 introduction of the Gregorian calendar to Prussia, so Frederic's failure and two bogus departures for Germany coincide with Louis Napoleon's failed coup of 5-6 August 1840 (DD, 40). The strong beam of sunlight which shatters Frederic's concentration on 5/75 August 1842 brings about a coincidence of Frederic's and Louis Napoleon's failures on Napoleon's birthdate. Imperial heirs fail because of imperial prototypes, an idea dear to the heart of Victor Hugo, for whom 5 August 1852 marked both his arrival in Jersey and the appearance of Napoleon-le-Petit 'Apres Auguste, Augustule; apres Napoleon-leGrand, Napoleon-le-Petit.' (JR, 121). On 22 November 1842 (11, 32), Frederic walks with Marie along the Boulevard des Italiens between the Rue de Choiseul and
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the Rue de Richelieu (n, 33). 22 November is the date of Napoleon's depucelage in 1787 (Aretz, 37-9) and of la sainte-Cecile (Voragine, 689): the illegitimate Dambreuse girl named for dim-sightedness, a factor the name shares with Moreau (CY, 143, 200; Long, 128), is also the patron saint of music. 22 November is also the time of Emma Bovary's 'grande ardeur musicale' and produces Charles's confusion of the names Dubreuil and Lempereur (NV, 520-1). The 'fameuse maitresse' associated with the Emperor is both Elisa Schlesinger and Leonie Biard, and the five-day time run 20-4 November 1842 in ESn produces a characteristic 'occulting' of the fourth and penultimate day, expressed through Frederic's thoughts on Tavant-dernier dans la serie, position mauvaise' (n, 30). Marie's return of 20 November 1842 is announced by Arnoux the following day. The walk along the boulevard on the anniversary of Napoleon's depucelage produces a dinner invitation for the following Thursday, 24 November 1842 (11, 33). On 22 November 1851, nine years after the promenade, Frederic will claim that Rosanette thought he was blind because he closed his eyes, and Rosanette will describe Marie's eyes as 'grands comme des soupiraux de cave, et vides comme eux!' (n, 157). 22 November 1862 was the first of the Magny dinners (RLW, 76) and 22 November 1868 marked Turgenev's visit to Croisset (Jacobs, 39). The final reunion of Frederic and Deslauriers through 'la fatalite de leur nature' (11, 161) as ecrivains manques occurs on that same 22 November 1868, but the temporal point never reached, the day of silence in the five-day run, is still in Flaubert's memory: on 23 November i82g, Elisa Foucault married Judee (G-G, 48). The visit to the Alhambra and Frederic's night out in the cold occur on 23-4 April 1843. Cogny (p. 255) gives February 1843 on the basis that it is a celebration of the exams, and GothotMersch finds 'un dimanche d'ete' in the plans (p. 27). The warmth and greenery of the outdoor setting would seem to favour spring/summer, but summer is ruled out by the syntagmatic axis, since the later Saint-Cloud episode occurs on Saturday 24 May/June 1843, from which vantage point the Alhambra night is referred to as occurring 'le mois passe' (n, 38). This
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places Frederic's temptation to suicide on the Pont de la Concorde at 24 April 1843. In 1848, Sunday 23 April was a milestone: as well as being Easter Sunday, it was the first time universal male suffrage was exercised in France (Duveau, 95). 23 April marked the coincidence of Jupiter's Vinalia and the first of the prostitutes' holy days dedicated to Venus Erycina (Fasti, 253-5). I n 1848, 23 April will be superimposed on several other dates in such a way as to make Frederic's depucelage and the visit to the Club de l'lntelligence coincide with it. An opinion about the efficacy of universal suffrage is surely contained in all of these contrived coincidences. It is no accident that the walk along the Boulevard des Italiens on the anniversary of Napoleon's depucelage is followed by a period of undifferentiated time which culminates in the visit to the Alhambra of 23-4 April 1843, f° r t n i s is the night of Deslauriers's depucelage. Napoleon Bonaparte accosted a PalaisRoyal streetwalker after his visit to the Theatre d'ltalie on 22 November iy8y (Aretz, 37-9); Charles Deslauriers accosts the carton-carrying Clemence Daviou in the Rue de Rivoli arcade after his visit to the Alhambra. The prostitute Marie oiNovembre describes her first act of prostitution as follows: cje n'avais qu'a sortir comme pour porter de l'ouvrage dans un faubourg' (/, 266). Clemence Daviou's carton is the site of the grisette's identity with the prostitute, for Dussardier's carton of December 1841 was synonymous with his metier (11, 18-9), just as Dambreuse's cartons are with his (11, 15, 64). The second Vinalia of the year occurred on ig August (OCD, 569). These festivals are the basis of a coincidence of 23-4 April and ig-20 August which explains the summer setting in the plans (G-M, 27) and equates Deslauriers's defloration with the conception of Napoleon III at Saint-Cloud in 1807. The events of 24 April/20 August 1843 show the narrator's complicity with Charles Deslauriers's lie concerning la dame aux violettes, Clemence Daviou, and Cisy's desire to 'borrow' Clemence for his own sexual initiation (n, 36) adds force to what is implied. For Frederic's generation, all desire is mediated: it is modelled on Napoleon Bonaparte's desire and cannot exist independently of
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it. 20 August 1843, a year after the clandestine rendezvous in the Rue de Choiseul, is the occasion of Deslauriers's defloration, which thereby precedes/succeeds the floral annunciation at Saint-Cloud of 24 May /June 1843. Clemence Daviou's metier is the sewing of gold braid on military uniforms, and Deslauriers's wearing of the false red ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur (11, 36) is his means of ensuring Clemence's continued admiration. The emphasis on Clemence's identity as a grisette, at the expense of her identity as a streetwalker, shows that the young men of Frederic's disinherited generation share the young Bonaparte's inability to distinguish prostitution/patriotism from more disinterested sentiments. Since the novel's next scene will occur at Saint-Cloud, the place where Augustus begat Augustulus, the suicidal impulse is attributed to the failure to conceive of a desire that is not the sterile repetition of a glorious imperial model. Another aspect of the self-destructive impulse of 24 January/February/April/20 August is Flaubert's awareness of his own flirtation with danger: in persisting with the literature of subversion, however skilfully disguised, he has the trial of Madame Bovary very much in mind. The references to Shakespeare, censorship, style, and Victor Hugo at the Alhambra, plus the later references to the 'damned spot' of Macbeth (11, 43), are Flaubert's comment on 23 April as a 'trick date' because of the delayed introduction of the Gregorian calendar to England in 1752: although Shakespeare and Cervantes both died on 23 April 1616, William Shakespeare's Tuesday death occurred ten days after Cervantes' Saturday death, that is on 3 May New Style (JBB, 188). This accounts for the discrepancy in time which disguises Clemence Daviou's identity as the streetwalker of the Alhambra night. For Flaubert, the writer's commitment to truth makes him the opponent of a corrupt regime, and the two mysterious Saturdays and Tuesdays of ES11 are based on Cervantes' Saturday death and Shakespeare's often days later (11, 36-7, 68, 108, 120). The 23 April/3 May 1843 setting of the literary argument at the Alhambra creates further coincidences, this time involving the takings at the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, Alexandre
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Dumas and Victor Hugo (11, 35). 22 April 1843 s a w t n e coincidence of the final representation of Hugo's Les Burgraves and the triumph of the premiere of Ponsard's Lucrece (JR, 97). The Alhambra argument occurs twenty-four hours after Classicism triumphed over Romanticism in the theatre, and although Flaubert was criticised by his Romantic friends for admiring Ponsard's play (Ci, 927), his final allegiance lay with the Romantics. The oblique reference to the triumph of Dumas's Antony at the Porte-Saint-Martin on 3 May 1831 (Ci, 846) shows a continuing support for the Romantics, and the standard of public taste is measured by the response to Delmas's performance on the anniversary of Beranger's birth of ig August IJ8O. Finally, 23 April 1841 was the date of the appearance in Le Charivari of an article concerning La Chaumiere, Leon Dupuis's favourite haunt in MB (1, 652): 'Ma tante, la Chaumiere est un grand jardin oii nous nous reunissons tous les dimanches, apres vepres. — La Tante: — Apres vepres? — Le neveu: Oui, ma tante' (Ci, 873). When Hussonnet announces the date of Marie's fete as 'samedi prochain, 24' (11, 36), two-timing and conception coincide. Double-dating is acknowledged through the arrival immediately afterwards of the Dambreuse invitation for the same day (n, 37). Flaubert's plans give 24 May 1843 for SaintCloud (G-M, 45). The problem is that this was a Wednesday. The only samedi 24 in 1843 w a s the Baptist's birthday in June, a festival traditionally associated with floral boating trips at the summer solstice (Fasti, 381). As 24 May/June 1843, Marie's name day anticipates Dussardier's saving of the gamin/tricolore on Saturday 24 June 1848 (11, 130) by five years, and is a parallel to the Alhambra/election day of Sunday 23 April 1843/8. As well, the information that Arnoux leaves for the country each year 'aux premieres feuilles' (11, 37) adds 24 March 1843 to this moment of multiplied time. Frederic misses the carriage which takes the Arnoux to the point of conception not because he is late, but because Arnoux is impatient: the Arnoux carriage leaves prematurely on 23 March/ May/June 1843. Since the episode at Saint-Cloud coincides with the conception of Eugene Arnoux, timing is important. Ovid gives both 24 February and 24 May as the times of the Regifugium or Flight of
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the King (Fasti, 107, 135): the man who moves fastest becomes the queen's consort, the one who engenders. The time of conception is also associated with 24 March as the Day of Blood in the annual Attis festival: on that day the castrated genitals of the god became the fecundating pomegranate (Frazer, 461), and Matho tries to make Salammbo eat a pomegranate in the episode 'sous la tente' of 24-5 March/September 2jg BC(i, 760). 24 March belongs to Gabriel, the Angel of the Annunciation (AF, 101). Voragine expresses the Virgin's espousal to Joseph on the eve of the Annunciation through 'the flowering of Joseph's staff'. Mary's return to Nazareth for the Immaculate Conception of 25 March is a second floral annunciation: 'Nazareth means flower. Whence Bernard says that the Flower willed to be born of a flower, in flower, and in the season of flowers' (p. 204). 24 March 1843 is the day of the flowering staff, and the staff of the God is Gustave (CY, 289). The Saint-Cloud conception is multiple: the respective moods of Jacques and Marie on Frederic's arrival suggest the post-coital Mars and Venus motif of painting (n, 37); the wounding by the pin which joins the Rose-writing to the rose bouquet suggests a floral annunciation (11, 39); and the multiplied timing of the event suggests a more mysterious conception through the Word of the God (-staff). Human conception would suggest a triple birthday for Eugene Arnoux of 24 December 1843/24 February 1844/24 March 1844,
with 24 February 1844 as the 'logical' date of birth. Flaubert's designation of the impossible 24 May for SaintCloud is the signal for anniversaries based on the 24 May/ November coincidence: 24 November 1843 was the fiftieth anniversary of France's abolition of the Christian Era (AF, 400). On 24 November iyg8, the London Morning Chronicle published Napo-
leon's letter concerning Josephine's adultery, intercepted on its way from Egypt. By the end of the month, Napoleon was a laughing stock (Cronin, 159). At the wedding banquet which followed her marriage at 11.30 p.m. on 23 November i82g, hence on 24 November i82g, Elisa Judee was raped by her new husband's military comrades, according to a legend in the Schlesinger family which also says that Elisa was impregnated during the rape and fled to Paris before dawn (Lottman, 57-8).
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The parallels with Marie's ordeal over the rose bouquet and the letter proving adultery show that Flaubert knows things about Elisa's life which are usually accessible only to a lover, and add a 'historical' dimension to his fictions via parallels with the imperial family. 23 March, one of the dates of the Arnoux's departure for Saint-Cloud, was Mid-Lent in 1843, so Marie's humiliation coincides with Henry Gosselin's in the Bois de Boulogne on the day after the Mid-Lent ball in ESi. 24 March 1850 is the date when Gustave contracted syphilis on the Nile, a disaster foreshadowed by the calamitous attempt at a boat ride on the Seine at Saint-Cloud on a day, 24 June also, which saw tipsy revellers attempting to steer flowery skiffs on the Tiber in Rome at the solstitial rose festival (Fasti, 202-3). The first of the novel's 'deux grands trous' (Bern, 626) occurs when a Saturday in August 1843 becomes a Saturday in September 1844. Regimbart's reference to the Camarilla's expenditure on Algeria (1844) enables us to situate the moment when thirteen months are dropped: it is when Hussonnet turns himself upside down and walks around the table on his hands (n, 40).The dates are identifiable through the cachemire episode: on 25 February 1847, anniversary of the quarrel over Hernani, Marie will insist on Tautre mois, un samedi, le 14' (11, 68). In 1847, the o n ly Saturday 14 occurred in August, an impossible date in terms of the cachemire, and 14 January was a Sunday. Every detail of Marie's story about the shawl is either false or psychologically implausible. For one thing, Arnoux took the cachemire to Rosanette: it was not delivered (11, 61, 68). For another, the question arises as to why Marie did not raise the subject when she found out about it, instead of accompanying her husband to dinner with the Bertins without a word. Marie Arnoux, a character within the novel, is drawing attention to an event outside the novel and twenty years in the future, as well as to an aspect of the novel's structure: the fact that, in its fifth chapter, Saturday 12 August 1843 becomes Saturday 14 September 1844. The suppression of three thirteens here (13 August, 13 September and thirteen months) will be repeated when a year is dropped between 12 December 1845 a n d 14 December
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1846, with the 'silent' date of Gustave Flaubert's birthday, 13 December, in between. A coach trip postponed by twenty-four hours is a common factor. But Saturday 14 also refers to the superimposition of 14 September on 12 August, and this produces a suppressed date which fits the vacation Sunday in 1837 when Frederic and Deslauriers visit Zoraide Turc's house (n, 162). Sunday 13 August 1837 also fits the opening scene of BeP, creating a coincidence of ends and beginnings. Another explanation of Saturday 24 involves the fact that Marie is speaking on the occasion of the ancient Roman bissextile: the day after 24 February was regarded as another 24 February after Caesar's calendar reforms. Earlier, the intercalated month Mercedonius began on 25 February, so February is 'last month' from the point of view of the first day of Mercedonius (Samuel, 156). The introduction of the Gregorian calendar to Augsburg on 14/24 February 1583 allows the possibility that Saturday 24
February 1844, the 'logical' date of Eugene Arnoux's birth, is the Saturday 14 of the cachemire argument.
13 August marks another death which occurred during the composition of ESu, that of Eugene Delacroix in 1863 (AF, 250), and the pun Cygne de la Croix/ Cigne-Delacroix which dates
from the novel's first day, 15 September 1840, establishes Flaubert's position: on the side of the Romantics again. Hussonnet's self-inversion at the picnic repeats the 'a travers' understanding of 1842, which brought about an addition instead of a loss of ten days to the text through the duplication of 15 and 5 August 1842. The day of the picnic is also the day of Emma Bovary's arise nerveuse, 3/14 September 1843, on the day
before a planned elopement which coincided with the drowning of Leopoldine Hugo and her husband while her father was on tour with his mistress. Frederic's meeting with the Dambreuse couple 0x13/13 August 1843 ^JVD 4/15 September 1844 occurs twenty years before the death of Talleyrand's illegitimate son, Eugene Delacroix, on 13 August 1863, and explains why Dambreuse/Delessert has the extraordinary pallor and glassy eyes (n, 15) of Talleyrand (Orieux, 496) and of Fouche (SZ, 12-13, 273). The diplomat/ police chief is a conspirator, and Flaubert ponders, by these
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coincidences, his own fate if he had surrendered to the temptation to elope with the beloved woman, to put life and its intrigues above art. Frederic's postponed coach trip home on the following day establishes an even more astonishing coincidence: on the anniversary of Maurice Schlesinger's 5 September 1840 marriage to Elisa Foucault Judee (G-G, 78), M. Roque marries Mme Eleonore in order to legitimise his daughter, a fact mentioned by Mme Moreau the next day, the day of Frederic's ruination. That day, 5/15 August 1843 AND 6117 September 1844, is another anniversary of Napoleon's birth, of Frederic's failure at the 1842 exams and of Louis Napoleon's abortive coup, as well as of Hugo's arrival in Jersey as an exile on the same day his Napoleon-le-Petit was published. The suggestion is there that there is something wrong with the imperial prototype on which these actions are modelled, especially since the names Eleonore, Catherine and Louise are those of the most important women in Roque's life and of the mother of Napoleon's first child. IJ September is the anniversary of an empty inheritance and a crushing disappointment; it is also a prolepsis of the disastrous September day in 1849 when Bouilhet and Du Camp told Flaubert that he should burn his manuscript of TSAi and never refer to it again (1, 24-5). Marie's insistence on Saturday 14 in 1847 (n> 68) is a demand that we examine suppressed time, that we ask what happened before the IJ September 1844 which repeats the novel's opening date and coincides with Frederic's first sight of the Dambreuse couple at the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre. What we find is a marriage which took place later than Frederic thought and a child who does not know that she is illegitimate. M. Dambreuse,
keeper of cardboard cartons and notebooks instead of sacks of gold (n, 64) and patient accumulator of forest land (11, 12, 29, 145), expresses doubt about time on IJ September 1844: he thought Frederic was in the second year of his legal studies (n, 40). On 21 August 1843, Flaubert failed second year Law, and he abandoned legal studies in January of the following year (G-G, 98-9). On Saturday 12 August 1843, Pellerin has begun a Genie de la Revolution and Alfred de Cisy abandons legal studies.
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The doubling of time at the Saturday picnic means that the two dates applied to Marie's return, 14 and 21 September 1844, are also 12 and ig August 1843: the conception of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is foreshadowed once again and associated with a hidden pregnancy. The message of these contrived coincidences is clear: 'The Emperor is a bastard!' After Louis Napoleon was elected President in December 1848, his uncle, King Jerome, at whose wedding festivities at Saint-Cloud the Napoleonic conception is supposed to have occurred, levelled this charge at his nephew in front of the assembled company (DD, 5, 57). Flaubert was a friend and guest of Princesse Mathilde and of her brother, Prince Jerome (1, 14). Several additional dates are generated by the stay in Nogent. After three months, on iy December 1844, Frederic begins to work for Maitre Prouharam (11, 41); after six months, on iy March 1845, Frederic learns that Deslauriers and Senecal have been living together since 3 March 1845 (11, 42), the exact date of Caroline's marriage to Emile Hamard. That this was a profound disappointment for Flaubert is indicated by his reaction at the time (Ci, 948-9), and by a dream he had on the anniversary of that wedding day in 1856 (CII, 606). On 24 September 1844, Frederic stops trying to write to Marie, and 'elle me croira mort' belongs to 1/8 October 1844. Louise Roque's age changes while Frederic is in Nogent: on iy September 1844, Frederic estimates it as about twelve (11, 41); yet Mme Eleonore's arrival in Nogent before Louise's birth occurred 'vers 1834' (11, 42). If the narrator is right, Louise is not yet thirteen in August i84y when she challenges Frederic to marry her (11, 100), so the 'transformation extraordinaire' of less than a year (11, 99) is extraordinary indeed. And it cannot be attributed to the second great hole in time when a year is dropped between the inheritance news of 12 December 1845 (n> 43) and the departure for Paris two nights later on 14 December 1846 (11, 44), for Frederic noticed that Louise was a year taller at the time, even if he did attribute it to her mourning. GothotMersch (p. 15) shows that Flaubert made a table in which the age of seventeen was associated with 1848, and so on down to the age of twelve in 1843. Since Marthe will be seven soon on
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75 September 1840 (11, 10), a birth late in 1833, which equals 'vers 1834', is suggested for the Arnoux's first child. Dussardier's vision of the bloodstained bayonets of Bugeaud's troops in the Rue Transnonain occurred when he was fifteen, on 13 April 1834 (11, 9370). This places Dussardier's illegitimate birth before 13 April i8ig. Late 1833 is the time of the meeting at the College de Sens of the twelve-year-old Frederic and the fifteen-year-old Deslauriers (11, 12). On 75 September 1840, Frederic is eighteen and Deslauriers twenty-two (11, 8, 13), so Frederic was born between 75 September and the end of 1821, and Deslauriers was born in 1818 before 13 September. Deslauriers's 'father' did not leave the army and return to Nogent to marry until 1818 (11, 12). The suggestion is that he 'captured' a dowry by marrying an already pregnant woman: nine months before 75 September 1818 is 75 December 1817.
Frederic's extravagant father died in a duel fought during his wife's only pregnancy (n, 11, 90), so the legitimacy of Frederic's conception is in doubt, since Marie associates duels with insults to a woman's honour (11, in). Cecile Dambreuse is illegitimate (11, 145) and Cisy was raised by a pious Breton grandmother who dies at about the same time as Barthelemy Moreau, who visits Nogent from 8 to 75 September 1843, a 'coincidence' (n, 43) not lost on Frederic. On this 75 September 1843, when Barthelemy Moreau leaves Nogent and Frederic refuses M. Roque's invitation to ride in the tapissiere to La Fortelle, a missed carriage trip which equals the refusal of an adoption seems to produce Mme Eleonore's death sentence. Since the Roques' marriage to legitimise Louise occurred on j/16 September, eve of the 'disinheritance' of 77 September 1844, and since Roque was the cause of Frederic's disinheritance (11, 41), Mme Eleonore's death on 14 December 1844 is related to the subject of inheritance: Louise will be better off later (11, 44). The fact that Louise's age is raised first at the time of her parents' marriage and second at the death of her 'illegitimate mother' indicates the psychological stunting of children whose birth times are an indictment of their parents' sexuality. The table which makes Louise seventeen by 28 June 1848 suggests a birth before 28 June 1831; Frederic's estimate suggests
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a birth before iy September 1832; the narrator's version places the birth some time around the end of 1833. The last two versions associate Louise's life with Marthe Arnoux's, since Frederic's false estimate of twelve years is based on a comparison with Marthe. The names Catherine, Louise and Eleonore associate both girls with Napoleon Bonaparte's first and illegitimate son, but the name Eleonore has significance in Louis Napoleon's life as well: Eleanora Marie Brault (Mme Gordon) was the reputed mistress, later Persigny's, who supported the first abortive coup attempt in 1832 and was rebuffed after Louis Napoleon became President (DD, 27). This was the Prince's second political skirmish: the first claimed the life of his brother, NapoleonLouis, during the 1831 Italian uprising (ibid., 16). In Louis Napoleon's life, the most important Eleonore was a lingere named Alexandrine-Eleonore-Vergeot, cla belle Sabotiere', mother of his two illegitimate sons, Alexandre-LouisEugene, born 25 February 1843, a n d Alexandre-Louis-Ernest, born 18 March 1843 during the Ham imprisonment following the episode of 5-6 August 1840 (\Villiams71, 50). This abortive coup, one of whose more risible aspects was a dishevelled vulture tethered to the mast of the Edinburgh Castle in imitation of the imperial eagle, suggests a parallel between living avortons whose lives are stunted by 'illegitimate parents' and the miscarried attempts at the seizure of power by the 'illegitimate heirs' of Bonapartist desire. Discarding a mistress/mother associated with an illegitimate/abortive enterprise was a repeated event in the imperial family. The association of Louise Roque with Marthe Arnoux through the manipulation of time enables Flaubert to analyse the 'bouderies' (11, 106) of Marthe/MarieAdele with respect to her relationship with Elisa, and to suggest that its model is the Bonaparte-Beauharnais family. Under 1846 in the plans of the novel, Gothot-Mersch finds 'repart pour Paris en fevrier' (p. 15), which makes Frederic's arrival in Paris occur on / j February/December 1846. The 'grand trou' (Bern, 626) left by the omission of the year of 13 December 1845 t o T3 December 1846 occurs on Flaubert's occulted birthday and is associated with a missed coach ride, this time because the coach was full.
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The search for Regimbart on 16 February/December 1846 results in a false destination based on the confusion of two Alexandres reminiscent of the second emperor's bastards: Frederic is taken to a Cafe Alexandre on the right bank when his destination should have been an Estaminet Alexandre on the left bank (11, 46). Frederic will finally find Arnoux and Marie engaged in 'Bonapartist' behaviour: while Napoleon was married to Marie-Louise, he would pick up his favourite nephew, Louis Napoleon, by the head and hold him high in the air, much to the consternation of his sister-in-law and stepdaughter, Hortense, who objected on medical grounds (DD, 8—9). Frederic witnesses a similar scene in the Rue ParadisPoissonniere on 16 December 1846 (11, 47). 16 December i8og is the
date of the civil dissolution of the Bonaparte/Beauharnais marriage, which was annulled on 14 January 1810, and this is the period of 'unseasonaP weather in 1846-7 in ESn, ending on the day after the expulsion of an old woman in black on 13 January 1847 (11, 56). On the anniversary of Eugene de Beauharnais's announcement to the Senate of his mother's abandonment (Hudson, 135), Frederic becomes aware of the existence of Eugene Arnoux; on the following day, 17 December 1847, t n e e x a c t date of MarieLouise's death (Turnbull, 292), summer weather begins with Frederic's luncheon at the Palais-Royal in the company of Charles Deslauriers (n, 48), and it continues beyond Frederic's two-day visit to Le Havre of 18-ig December 1846 (11, 49). Rosanette's costume ball occurs on 20—1 December 1846, seventeenth anniversary of the Lanty ball in Sarrasine (Addison, 70).
The year 1846 was Vannee maudite in Flaubert's life, since it brought the deaths of a father and sister and the marriage of Alfred Le Poittevin (1, 12). Evil's 1845/6 begins with the eve of Gustave's double birthday through an allusion to a laundry basket overturned by Frederic's myopic clumsiness on // December 1845 (n? 43)? a n d ends with the ball of 20-1 December 1846. However, because of the coincidence of 22 December 1582/ 1 January 1583 and 1/12 January 1701, the period between the ball and Frederic's note to the Dambreuses on 12 January 1847 is
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occulted, and this, together with the inversion of the solstices beginning on the Saturnalia of iy June/December 1846, accounts for the contradictory references to the timing of the ball on 13 and 14 January 1847. The time-weather contradiction which sees light streaming into the Rue de Laval before 7 a.m. on 21 December continues until 14 January 1847 when a strong beam of sunlight suffuses Marie's skin with liquid gold. Frederic's allusion to the name-day at Saint-Cloud of three years earlier (11, 57) on 14 January 1847 creates a coincidence with 24 May/ June 1846 which makes Marie's Tautre jour' description of the ball of 20-1 June/December 1846 make sense, especially since Frederic thinks of the ball as Tautre nuit' on 13 January 1847 (n? 55). Hence, the implied 14 January of the cachemire argument also signals a coincidence of a 14/24 June/July/December/January. At the iy December lunch chez Vefour, Deslauriers is wearing SenecaPs blue-black manteau lined with red (11, 48), and the act of sharing a cloak has been established as a sign of close relationship since 15 September 1840 when Frederic shared his with Deslauriers (11, 14). The fact that Senecal is wearing the same distinctive garment on / May 1847 (11, 78), combined with the fact that at a time in 1851 when Charles Deslauriers is being dressed by Frederic's tailor he still gives his used coats to Senecal (11, 151), leads to the conclusion that Deslauriers and Senecal are still living together. Yet Deslauriers will claim a month to the day later, at the cremaillere of iy January 1847, that they ceased cohabitation six months earlier, that is, on iy July 1846 (11, 57). Frederic learned of the cohabitation on iy March 1845, s o ^ lasted exactly sixteen months in terms of Frederic's awareness as informed by Deslauriers. However, his impatience with SenecaPs working-class visitors is far more likely to have coincided with his learning of Frederic's inheritance on iy February/June/December 1846, so the coincidence ofJune/July and December/January gives truth to Deslauriers's lie at the cremaillere
of iy January i84y. There is considerable irony in the fact that Frederic's adoption and the announcement of Cecile Dambreuse's adoption into wealthy Parisian society should coincide with the Buzen^ais food riots of Wednesday 13 January i84y (11, 55), the twenty-fifth
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anniversary of Gustave Flaubert's baptism. The presence of so many mothers and their daughters at this Wednesday reception indicates that Dambreuse wants to launch his daughter during this 'season', and the fact that Cecile's ball does not occur until 24 February 1847, the unfashionable 'tail end' of the season, indicates that Mme Dambreuse is delaying Cecile's 'coming out' as long as possible. In 1840, the Dambreuse ball was held in November (11, 15). Rosanette's three alibis of this same 13 January 1847 are explained by the 'representation extraordinaire' at the Ambigu (11, 56) which would give Delmar the evening off— unless 'Felix' is his latest role, for Frederic has not yet obtained the lorgnon made possible by his inheritance. The multiplication of time during this halcyon period makes the Dambreuse reception and Rosanette's dismissal of the old lady in black coincide with 23 June 1846, and the house warming of Sunday iy January 1847 with 2J June 1846. The old woman in black dismissed on the Empress Josephine's birthday, 23 June, associates the RoseAnnette Bron who was known in La Croix-Rousse as Hortense Baslin, the little queen, with two women from the Imperial family, since Josephine was known as 'Rose' at home in Martinique. Rosanette expels her own mother on the 23 June/ 13 January which also coincides with 13 March/July 1846 through the dense chronological soup following Frederic's return to Paris on the sixth anniversary of Napoleon's entombment at Les Invalides on IJ December 1840. A reference to the new play, La Reine Margot, which opened o n 20 February 1847 (11, 66 4 7 ), suggests Wednesday 24 February 1847
for the Dambreuse ball. Therefore, Rosanette dismisses Oudry a year to the day before the February Revolution sent LouisPhilippe packing on 24 February 1848, and in fact a parallel is made: 'A partir de demain soir, liberte!' (11, 65). Ovid's doubledating of the Flight of the King or Regifugium at both 24 February and 24 May produces a second version of this event. On Thursday 25 February 1847, Rosanette's 'liberte' takes the form of a rendezvous with Delmar, according to Clemence Vatnaz (11, 67), and the cachemire argument of the same night sees the thrice-promised 26 February 1847 which never arrives (n, 68, 69).
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At the Dambreuse ball, Frederic for the first time wears the lorgnon which his inheritance has enabled him to afford; but this instrument is not a panacea for all the forms of vanity-induced myopia to which Frederic is subject (11, 66). The dating of the ball establishes the Saturday portrait sitting as 20 February 184.J. That evening, Frederic promises Hussonnet and Deslauriers 15,000 francs and receives a letter from his mother (11, 64). On Sunday 21 February 1847, he dines with Mme Arnoux, as a result of which he has an interview with Dambreuse in Oudry's presence on Monday 22 February. This ironic anticipation of the 1848 Revolution is a contradiction: Frederic is obeying neither Mme Arnoux nor his mother in the request he makes to M. Dambreuse. In seeking to ennoble himself, Frederic is obeying M. Roque (11, 42, 64). Dambreuse's invitation for the 'soiree' in a few days' time is actually for the ball of 24 February 1847, s o the o n r y 'silent' day of this seven-day time run from 20 to 26 February 1847
ls
2
3 February, the date of
Frederic's sexual initiation a year later. The period between the Moulin-Rouge evening of 18 January 1847 and the portrait sitting of 20 February 1847 sees the first mention of the cachemire and its purchase, events which are part of Frederic's vaguely conceived efforts to separate the Arnoux, to introduce Senecal into the Montataire factory as his spy and to seduce Rosanette. The cachemire has been promised for six months, that is from some time between 18 July 1846 and 20 August 1846 (11, 61). The next undifferentiated period, from the cachemire argument of 25 February 1847 to Arnoux's request of 23 March 1847 * na t Frederic take his place by pretending to be Rosanette's lover, contains a time loop which includes Frederic's visit to M. Dambreuse on 3 March 1847, a w e ^k after the ball, followed by Arnoux's disgrace over the kaolin company and his invitation to Marie to dine at the Maison d'Or (n, 71). This period also sees Frederic's introduction of Cisy to Rosanette and the resale of the cachemire.
On 23 March 1847 Frederic receives news of the 15,000 francs from his lawyer and witnesses the cruel dismissal of Clemence Daviou in the Rue des Trois-Maries (11, 73). The heartless
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dismissal of a grisette who has seen a young man through the hard times (forty-seven months in this case) will be associated with the name Clemence in Le Chateau des coeurs (n, 334); Martinon's grisette (11, 16) has been dismissed in favour of a fiftyyear-old, ugly but rich woman by the night of the Alhambra when Deslauriers meets Clemence (11, 35). This discarding of 'used' women and objects, associated via Cisy with the sharing of friends' mistresses' sexual favours, is another aspect of that combination of sexuality and militarism which is Bonapartist gloire, rendered in Le Sexe faible by the clandestine relationship between General Varin des Hots and his servant, Gertrude, later replaced by Victoire (11, 364, 387). Victoire's pseudonym as a kept woman, Mme de Saint-Laurent, is that of Eleonore Denuelle, mother of Napoleon's first son, born in the Rue de la Victoire (Fleischmann, 106, 73). This 'pony express' attitude to women and other desired objects is older than Bonapartism, however, and the woman whose name and title associate her with the horse (see Rose) may have other ideas as to who is above/below the saddle. On Wednesday 24 March 1847, Arnoux claims to be expecting the payment of 30,000 francs at the end of the month, that is, 'd'ici a huit jours' (n, 74), and asks Frederic to take Vanneroy's place. On 25 March 1847, Frederic tells Deslauriers that the money has not arrived, and shortly after the end of the month, both Frederic and Deslauriers are bitterly disappointed in their expectations of friendship (11, 75). On 2 May 1847, Frederic tells Rosanette that he has not seen Arnoux for a month (11, 81), which situates the day of disappointment at 2 April 1847, Good Friday. Marie's visit to Frederic 'aux premiers jours d'avriP (11, 76) actually occurs on Friday g April 1847, since Frederic visits Dambreuse the following day and / May 1847 is later described as being three weeks after their interview (11, 77). Frederic's gift to Marie of a single rose from his garden marks the mid-point of the novel's length, so the words of this day are the central words of the novel. Why, then, does Flaubert begin them with a falsification? In anybody's terms, g April can hardly be said to be one of the first days of April: that role has already been filled
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by the Day of Double Disillusionment, 2 April 184J. Marie's visit has two dimensions: the financial and the sentimental. In terms of the financial dimension, the narration is consistent with the 2 April setting: the four bills which fell due two days earlier would coincide with the end of the financial year if this were 2 April 1847, but this would contradict the 'logical', syntagmatic axis which has taken us beyond 2 April through Frederic's Renaissance history (11, 75). 'Logical'/financial time and 'sentimental'/symbolic time have a criss-crossing of the axes here. The conjunction of 2/9 April 1847 makes the Renaissance history begin and end on the same day, and effaces the disillusionment of disappointed friendship. What the conjunction cannot efface is that Marie is guilty of a lie: at some time during the 18 January-20 February period, she claimed that Arnoux made her sign a bill in Dambreuse's favour; now she confesses that^wr bills fell due two days earlier. This makes Marie tell a similar lie to Rosanette's of December 1848 (11, 61, 76, 139, 150), and her compounding of the lie on 18 August 1847 brings about another epitaph, for on the day of Balzac's death (AF, 255), Marie becomes Adele (11, 98). The date on which Marie's four bills fall due is 31 March/7 April 1847 and Frederic's visit to Dambreuse is 3/10 April 1847. Here, temporal manipulation produces another Flaubertian pious fraud through the contamination of the axes: in Venus' month, Aprilis, on Venus' day, vendredi, the thorned flower of Venus, shameful badge of prostitutes and blood-red rose of Revolution, becomes the rosa sine spina of the Mother of God (AF, 109; Wilkins, 123, 151). 7 April is the most likely historical date of the Crucifixion (AF, 116), and 9 April, which therefore coincides with the Resurrection, is the feast of Mary the wife of Cleophas (ibid., 118), one of the original 'Three Maries' present at Calvary on Good Friday. The wife of Cleophas was AnneJustine-Caroline Flaubert, so the dies natalis on which birth and death coincide is the festival commemorating the Mother. Time, under Venus' influence, can foster the growth and fruition of unpleasant, venereal germinations, and the coppercoloured syphilides on Pecuchet's forehead are the result of his defloration on / April 1832 (n, 269). Yecuchet'sfructus belli are the
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equivalent of Arnoux's ccouronne de boutons roses' (11, 151) of the Rue de Fleurus in June 1851. The 'maturing' of the four bills of one thousand francs each on 7 April 1847, Tavant-veille' (11, 76), will deliver Marie into the hands of Mme Dambreuse and result in 'la vente de madame Arnoux' of / December 1851 (11, 157). In the meantime, the rosarium which Marie activates by turning the single rose around her fingers and repeating Frederic's words of hope creates a rosegarden/chaplet which is mystically outside time. The 'supremely pure and honourable gift' (Wilkins, 109) is that which is sub rosa, dedicated to the infant god of silence. Dambreuse saves his child by destroying his own writing; here, a mother and child are saved by placing language sub rosa on a day when crucifixion and resurrection coincide. Frederic's visit to Dambreuse to plead in Marie's favour occurs on 10 April 184J. Among the colourful 'etymologies' of Jacobus de Voragine's calendar, The Golden Legend, none is more inventive than the one Jacobus provides for his own name-day, la saint-Jacques, on / May: 'one who entraps; or, one who causes others to trip; or, one who prepares' (p. 261). To celebrate his own name-day, Jacques Arnoux prepares a trap that confounds his enemies and silences his accusers. By / May 1847, Arnoux is in a precarious position thanks to Frederic's machinations, Marie's spying and his own amorous and financial frauds. The events of /-5 May 1847 r e v e a l hnri as a strategist who knows how to anticipate his opponents' reactions. Arnoux's trap of / May 1847 is a prolepsis of Louis Napoleon's and Morny's use of the infamous suffrage law of 31 May 1850 as bait for the trap which led to the coup of I-J December 1851 (RP, 107-8). The two-timing/double-dating of / May/December is announced by the fact that, once again, Frederic is summoned by the Dambreuse milieu but sets off in search of Marie (11, 77). Arnoux's superimposition of Creil on Montataire announces itself as a cachemirel'fraud, since Creil derives from Credulio (Rostaing, 41), so Frederic's gullibility is emphasised. He accepts the bait announced by the bogus style of Rosanette's invitation to the Champ de Mars, just as Marie swallows the bait of the anonymous 'tip-off'. Creil's superimposition on Montataire, then, emphasises the
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credulity of both Frederic and Marie on / May 1847. Arnoux's body/style is behind both missives. The message to Marie, announcing that Arnoux will attend the races with Rosanette (11, 87), has multiple payoffs: it removes Marie from Montataire during the twenty-four-hour period that is the Bordelaise's day off (11, 79); it 'disproves' Marie's accusation that Arnoux is Rosanette's lover while affirming it simultaneously through Rosanette's humiliation of her protector's wife; and it breaks the alliance/spy network between Frederic and Marie which has inflicted the watchdog Senecal on Arnoux. Arnoux knows that the truth matters very little: it is how a situation appears to reflect on the individual's self-esteem that counts. Marie cannot accuse Arnoux again without pondering her own double humiliation at the Champ de Mars, when she discovered that her ally was a traitor and was publicly ridiculed by Rosanette. The note to Frederic (n, 81), 'ghosted' by the negre Arnoux who thereby becomes the double of the name Moreau, has provided Rosanette's amour propre with multiple advantages without costing Arnoux a sou, and Arnoux' self-esteem has been enhanced by the fact that Frederic and Cisy have paid for Rosanette's favours, yet both have been dismissed from Arnoux's favour. The only event which occurs on the important fourth and penultimate day is the dismissal of Senecal on Arnoux's return to Montataire (11, 87). Since the deaths on the Parisian boulevards in 1851 ended on 4 December, and since the parallel time runs indicate an equivalence of / - j May/December, SenecaPs dismissal is important, especially since Senecal is the only character we can connect with the 26 February which did not arrive in 1847: on 26 February 1848, thirty-third anniversary of Napoleon's escape from Elba (AF, 73), Senecal will urge the protesters to occupy the Hotel de Ville (11, 118), even though the Republic has been achieved. Frederic never questions SenecaPs ominous farewell of 5 May 1847, any more than he does Hussonnet's motives in informing him of Cisy's dismissal on 3 May 184J (11, 87). Hussonnet is a police spy, and he wants to keep all these people, who represent a cross-section of society, loosely united yet mutually suspicious so that he will continue to have a representative set of scapegoats available should he be
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required to 'turn someone in'. It is Hussonnet who recruits Senecal when all other avenues have been closed to the 'socialiste'. The May-December parallel of the Champ de Mars and the coup d'etat is one of the great Flaubertian tours deforce. It reveals the workings of a strategy which derives from Napoleon Bonaparte, who christened it with a memorable metaphor: 'La poire est mure' (Hudson, 94). Watching and waiting for people to act and react as they are bound to do, while maintaining a selfexonerating absence, is a strategy common to the May Arnoux and the December Louis Napoleon, and Flaubert signals these powerful, manipulative absences in the novel through the empty parrot's perch and Henry V allusion of the June Days. Changarnier's soubriquet for Louis Napoleon, 'the melancholy parrot', was an allusion to the shape and length of the imperial nose (RP, 87): from right beneath that beak, Flaubert shows how to beat the censorship imposed by a regime while demonstrating how that regime seized power. The subtle revenge on the man dubbed Napoleon le Petit and Augustule by Victor Hugo is achieved through this manipulation of time, for 2 December 1851, instead of being associated with Austerlitz and the coronation, becomes the anniversary of the Dos de mayo, of Arnoux's Champ de Mars 'scam' and of the spattering of Deslauriers's coat by his friend's carriage on the Boulevard des Italiens (11, 84). The coup d'etat becomes the cheap trick of a middle-aged philanderer whose accomplice is La Belle France as Jille publique, kept woman, tramp Venus. The Minerva/ Sophia/Madonna that France might have been is dismantled and auctioned on the date which saw the first moves of the coup: / December I8JI. Well may Regimbart repeat his charge: 'On escamote la Republique!' (11, 115). Flaubert's association of horse racing with the state of France itself produces a symbol which appears in ESi, in MB and in Le Candidat. At Chantilly during the racing season, the haut monde led by Morny frequented the well-known Lion d'Or, a name which associates Orleanist France with the outmoded somnolence of Mere Lefrangois's hostelry in Yonville: 'Ici au lit on dort' (RP, 531). No wonder the pear was ripe.
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On Wednesday ig May 1847, Frederic attends Anselme de Forchambeaux's souper de gargon at the Maison d'Or (11, 87). The duel in a quincunx in the Bois de Boulogne follows on Friday 21 May 1847 (HJ 91)? w i t n the result that almost no one attends the third of the novel's five weddings: that of Anselme on 20 May 1847(11,88). Senecal is arrested for his part in the incendiary bomb conspiracy of 6 June 1847 (11, 92), yet is at liberty, thanks to Hussonnet, by the time of the punch which celebrates his release on 5 October 1847. On 27 June 1847, Frederic first sees Pellerin's portrait of Rosanette and Hussonnet's article, Une Poulette entre trois cocos (11, 93). Senecal is arrested carrying gunpowder which he intended to test in Montmartre, a workers' suburb, a year to the day before Senard became President of the Assembly on 6 June 1848. The question arises, therefore, as to which side of the blue-black coat with red lining (11, 87) he was wearing on the outside on that day in 1847. Dussardier's ambition to save Senecal at the Luxembourg through the phalanx of a dozen determined men is hopeless precisely because of the pari mentioned at the Maison d'Or (11, 88): 'Thebes, City of Light' is near Delphi, the 'Pythian House of Gold' which demands selfknowledge (Sophocles, 30). The Luxembourg is a synecdoche of la ville lumiere as both Thebes and Paris, place of paris, and the Delphic injunction associated with the Pythian Maison d'Or produces the riddle of the five/six participants in the duel of the quincunx: Alfred/Frederic is a mirror image of one nonperson. The 'phalange' can never be activated because of Oedipal jealousy. The 'Gunpowder Plot' will return later; in the meantime, the 27 June of the portrait and the newspaper article is the only day missing from the ten-day run of 20-g June 1848. On 30 June 1847 (11, 93), Frederic attends the Dambreuses' Wednesday reception and sees Mme Dambreuse talking to a diplomat in a blue coat (n, 95). On 31 July 1847 (11, 96), Frederic loses 60,000 francs and returns to Nogent. His return to Paris on 21/31 August 1847 (11, 100) brings the news from Clemence Vatnaz that Rosanette is now being kept by the Russian Prince Tzernoukoff whose name is a double of Moreau (ECS, 148—9).
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The claim that the prince saw Rosanette at the Champ de Mars races of Tete dernier' (11, 101) creates a problem, because 2 May was during the spring of 1847, and it is now the last day of summer 1847. The previous summer was June—August 1846. Frederic visits Rosanette in her new apartment on the corner of the Rue Drouot and the Rue Grange Bateliere on / September 1847 (11, 101), and encounters Marie on the corner of the Rue Vivienne and the Boulevard Montmartre on 2 September 1847 (11, 102). Marie is wearing a capote and the Napoleonic floral emblem, and since 2 September iy/8 was the birthdate of Louis Napoleon's legal father, Louis Bonaparte (Kemble, 16), Flaubert's moment of reconciliation with Bonapartism would also seem to be an affirmation of the legitimacy of the future Napoleon III. However, the denied paternity attending the births of Josephine's and Hortense's children was also a factor in Maria Letizia Buonaparte's conception of Louis, for rumour had it that the godfather, Louis Marbeuf, was also the natural father of Louis Bonaparte (NY, 94). The illegitimate son of Rose/Hortense will be born in the Rue Marbeuf, behind a 'porte batarde' (11, 148): Flaubert is not giving up on his attacks on the origins of the Second Empire, especially since the cahiers de travail show that Mme Alessandria establishment (another reference to Louis Napoleon's two bastards by 'la Belle Alexandrine' from the Ham imprisonment) smacks of the brothel, the 'maison de conjuration' and of incest: 'La population est composee generalement de filles et de nieces (province) engrossees par leur pere [et] leur oncle' (de Biasi, 413-14). The cahiers also show that Regimbart's home in the Rue de l'Empereur is characterised by a similar 'petite porte batarde' to the one through which one passes into Mme Alessandri's establishment (ibid., 418). For Dussardier's punch, Gothot-Mersch quotes the plans: '(30 septembre) on interdit le banquet des typographes' (p. 28), so the architect's allusion to this event (11, 104) suggests that the month is October, and symbolic evidence supplies the day. The punch (from Hindu panch:five)is illuminated by 'cinq luminaires' (11, 103) and attended by ten participants, five of whom are named and five anonymous. Hence Frederic takes possession of
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the Rose/Poulette portrait (11, 105) in the hors-temps period of 5/75 October, on 6 October 1847. The day of the Rosary (AF, 308), 7 October 1847, seventh anniversary of the frigate Belle Poule's arrival in St Helena to bring Napoleon's remains back to France and of Louis Napoleon's simultaneous arrival at the fortress of Ham to begin a sentence of life imprisonment (WHCS, 49), is the day of Frederic's vow to Marie that he will never marry. 8 October 1847 sees Frederic's articulate and impassioned declaration of love to Marie, and the coincidence of Frederic's following Marie to Auteuil on the thirtieth anniversary of Caroline Flaubert's death of g October i8iy (Naaman, 171) suggests the reason for the violets in Marie's capote on 2 September 1847 a n d for her quest for violets at Auteuil on 1 November 184J (n, 106), eighth anniversary of the death of Jacques-Emile Judee (Mme Schlesinger's first husband) on / November i8jg.
In April 1832, after the abortive Italian uprising which claimed the life of her second son, Napoleon-Louis, Hortense Bonaparte took her last surviving legitimate son to Fontainebleau, the place of his baptism, and showed him the place where the abdications of 4/6 April 1814 were signed (DD, 17). Frederic will visit this site of the 1814 abdications on the day after the anniversary of the second abdication of 22 June 1815, in the company of a Rose/Hortense, on 23 June 1848 (n, 125). In the meantime, the second stay in Nogent generates further dates. The day on which Deslauriers's attempted seduction of Marie Arnoux coincides with Louise's proposal to Frederic (11, 98) is the date of the Choiseul-Praslin murder suppressed twice by Hussonnet at the punch: 18 August 1847 (n, 10476); this is also the date of Balzac's death in 1850. Frederic's two-day adoption by M. Roque occurs on ig-20 August 1847, during the visit to neighbouring properties (11, 100). These two days repeat the superimposed times of the Alhambra visit and its aftermath, as well as the rendezvous with a lorette in the familial residence of 20 August 1842. They also cause another time drop of ten days: Frederic's return on 20 August 1847 reveals a Dambreuse invitation for Tuesday IJ August 1847 and other letters. His resolve to return to Paris
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immediately results in an arrival there on 31 August 1847. This temporal space adds to the 'occulting' of the approximate time of Napoleon Ill's conception; and Deslauriers's reference to the proposed marriage between Frederic and Louise as 'Dans un mois, au plus tard' (11, 98) provides another 'notional' marriage. As will become apparent in connection with the Russian prince's movements in 1848, another time drop, this time of twelve days, makes Frederic's day with Louise at Nogent and Deslauriers's with Marie in Paris occur on 16/18/ 28 August 1842, so the notional Moreau-Roque marriage of 161 18/28 September 1847 is exactly three years after the marriage between M. Roque and Mme Eleonore on 5/16 September 1844. The coming of 1848 is heralded by two New Year's days: the first, on the Samhain / November 1847, is associated with 'un tronc d'arbre' and a woman bending over in search of violets (11, 106); the second with 1 January 1848 and a break in relationship caused by Marie's return to Paris (11, 107). The afternoon 'vers le milieu de fevrier' when Marie worries over Eugene's sore throat and Frederic obtains a rendezvous for 'mardi prochain' (11, 108) occurs on the 11/21 February on which Emilie grants Henry a rendezvous in ESi, and this coincidence explains the drop of ten days on 21/31 August 1847, six months earlier. Hence, Frederic's depucelage of 13/23 February 1848 will coincide with Gustave's on 23 February 1839 (Ci, 37). On 11/21 February 1848, at the time of Frederic's finding and feathering of the love nest in the Rue Tronchet (11, 108), the violets and tree trunk of Auteuil are repeated, for Tronchet is derived from the Latin Hruncus (d'arbre)' (D&R, 687). These symbols of the castrated member and blood of Attis were associated, during his rites in Rome, with the Day of Violets, 22 March (Frazer, 459). On 24 February 1848, the crowd at the Tuileries will be compared to 'un fleuve refoule par une maree d'equinoxe' (11, 113). The February Days are also the March Days, and this particular superimposition has the effect of making the anniversary of a sister's death on 22 March 1846 follow the anniversary of a niece's birth on 21 February 1846. Frederic buys violets and heather in a gesture which recalls Cisy's pun on La Bruyere's name at the Maison d'Or (n, 88).
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Since the heather of the Rue Tronchet can also refer to the rites of Venus Erycina at the Vinalia of 23 April and ig August, the reposoir prepared for the Fete-Dieu quadruples time: it is 21—5 February/March/April/June 1848.
22 February was the time of the Caristia in Rome, and this festival of familial reconciliation occurred 'le lendemain des Feralia' according to the Lares in TSA (1, 562). Family squabbles were patched up on the day following the Feralia/ Parentalia rites honouring the family dead with violets from 13 to 21 February (OCD, 434). St Peter's Banquet on 22 February commemorates the restoration to life of a son who died fourteen years previously, and replaces a pagan banquet of the dead (Voragine, 169-71). The death of Napoleon Charles from croup on 5 May i8oy anticipated that of Napoleon on 5 May 1821 by exactly fourteen years. Eugene's illness is resolved by the night of 22 February 184.8 two days before his fourth birthday, since the 'logical' time of the conception at Saint-Cloud was 24 May 1843. The prescription written by the unnamed doctor who smells of embalming is for 'du sirop d'ipecacuana, une potion kermatisee' (n, no). The first is an emetic and purgative, the second a red dye made from the crushed bodies of beetles. Eugene undergoes an initiation/rebirth similar to that of the devotees of Mithras whose bodies were drenched in the blood of a bull castrated and slaughtered over a wooden grating above their heads. Their emergence, covered in blood, from the pit below the grating symbolised an emergence from the womb. The locus of this ceremony in Rome was 'the Vatican Hill, at or near the spot where the great basilica of St Peter's now stands' (Frazer, 463). Eugene's rebirth changes his birthday by two days, from the 24 February dedicated to the Matthias who replaced Judas (Voragine, 171) to the 22 February of St Peter's Chair and Banquet. Instead of being the Oedipal Judas, who killed his father and married his mother according to the biography which Voragine offers under 24 February (pp. 171—4), Eugene becomes associated with familial reconciliation and with the death of Flaubert's sister i&g^-Caroline-Josephine on 22 March 1846.
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Judas died hanging between Heaven and earth; his body 'burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out' (Voragine, 174). Marie may think that he has rendered up 'un bout de ses entrailles' (11, no), but Eugene has merely expelled the parental prescription which is also the first Emperor's yellow, parchment-tinted skin, the Bonapartist myth which was suffocating his life —just as the myth of the quasi-divine function of the medical man-god, a myth lampooned in the Jenner play (n, 321-2), suffocated Gustave's life. Colot, a form of Nicolas (Lebel, 72), is the only name associated with the three doctors who attend Eugene, so the Bonaparte and Flaubert myths are merged in the saving of a child. Nicolas brings together the veterinarians of Nogent and the Emperor's pejorative nickname (A79, 46). Louise Roque's surname shows that she is one of the Lares, and her invention of the imaginary 'roquet Moricaud' (11, 98) who was really the young Louise who barked from her hidingplace behind a tree to frighten Frederic (11, 42) shows the truth of the saying 'comme saint Roch et son roquet'. In naming her imaginary self Moricaud, Louise defines herself as the devotedly canine diminutive of Moreau\ as the young lady who commissions 'deux grandes statuettes polychromes representant des negres' (11, 100), she is asking for a relationship between two adults named Moreau. The drowning of 'Moricaud' shows that Louise has grown up. Eugene's metallic barking makes him a Cerberus, as well as the canine hearth spirit whose appearance at the Caristia was a memento mori. His barking announces the return of AchilleCleophas on a night when the death of a Caroline follows the birth of a Caroline. Like Dr Lariviere, the retired old gentleman promises to return and doesn't, precisely because he is already a revenant.
In MB, the charge levelled at Lariviere through the unwritten language of time was that he diagnosed a mid-term pregnancy as a maladie nerveuse (1, 637); and Lariviere and Achille are synonyms. The locus of Achilles' heroism is Troie-Troyes, and the citadel of Troy is Pergamum, source of the word parchemin which is applied both to Eugene's journey and to the result of
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his accouchement 'son ventre se creusait comme s'il eut suffoque d'avoir couru' (n, no). Eugene's journey doubles that of Genevieve, patron saint of the capital, who ran the blockade from Troyes to Paris to bring succour to its starving citizens. The town which is the capital of Champagne is the centre of Moreau-Flaubert country, so Eugene's illness is an Iliad which is suffocating him. And the subtitle of the Iliad is 'the Wrath of Achilles'. It was the death from croup of Napoleon-Charles which ended the marriage of Louis and Hortense Bonaparte and is the strongest argument for the illegitimacy of Napoleon III (DD, 5). The coincidence of 22 February with 22 August, the day in 1799 when Napoleon left Egypt because 'the pear was ripe' (Hudson, 94), recalls Deslauriers's summons to Frederic on 22 February 1848 and signals another example of two-timing. Napoleon is the absent father whose nickname was Nicolas the Peasant/Devil and who was away on a campaign. Eugene is cured when he discharges the tube of parchment which equals the sallow skin of the Bonapartist legacy and the ordonnance of Achille-Cleophas' short-lived medical dynasty whose aspirations were based on Napoleon's: Frederic examines books, harness and mourning materials which spell out the three great phases of life and symbolise the necessary phase of involvement with a family named Beauharnais as he waits in the Rue Tronchet on 12/22 February 1848. Eugene's skin changes in hue from red to white to blue in the course of his crisis: it never gains the parchment-coloured hue of the Emperor's diphthera/epidermis, a colour which is also that of all the Flaubertian corpses who have returned to the Bonapartist soil from which they sprang. But yellow skin is also the result of treatment with quinine, and the quintes of the 'maudit petit chien' who is also a Norman quin signal the moment of reckoning over Caroline-Josephine's death. Treatment with quinine indicates that a puerperal fever was equated with a typhomalarial condition, and Maxime Du Camp claimed that Francois Raspail accused the younger Achille of perforating his sister's stomach with sulphate of quinine (Naaman, 20). A similar charge is brought by Dr Vaucorbeil in
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the context of Raspail's name and an outbreak of typhoid fever in BeP(n, 223). Gustave's brother Achille, 'neuf dans le metier', is exonerated, since he prescribes ice for the fever (n, no), and the Caristia is an appropriate time for this clearing of Achille's name, for it is the time when the surviving members of a family meet to patch up old quarrels. The fact that no outsiders were admitted makes the Bonaparte and Flaubert families one (OCD, 205).
The multiplication of time during the February Revolution makes the festival of Minerva of ig-23 March coincide with the prostitutes' holy day, 23 April, and Frederic spends 23 and 25 February/March/April with Rosanette, abandoning her (11, 115) on the middle day which coincides with the Regifugium, and on which Louis-Philippe does in fact flee (11, 113). The Roman Terminalia of 23 February celebrated both temporal and spatial boundaries, for this was one of the end points of the year. Therefore, the Bull announcing the Gregorian calendar, issued on 24 February 1382 (AF, 71) marked a time which was already a beginning, and the 'je me reforme' which accompanies Frederic's defloration on 23 February 1848 is followed by the sound of the tearing of an immense piece of silk on the Boulevard des Capucines (11, in), a name which combines fabric and flowers. The ending of the novel's second part at the transition point between 23 and 24 February is a reminder that the change from a monarchy to a Republican form of government is not the only reformation here: calendar reform means that time itself is being changed by its system of measurement. Another effect of the February—March coincidence is the addition of the dates of Christ's and Attis's passions (Frazer, 473—5) to the moment of Frederic's 'reforme', so the torn piece of silk coincides with the veil of the Temple (Matthew 27: 51) which tore at the moment of the Crucifixion. The February-June coincidence afforded by Frederic's reposoir makes Dussardier's scratched cheek of 24 February 1848 coincide with his thigh wound of 24 June 1848 and with the rose bouquet wound of 24 May/June 1843 (n? H4? I3°? 39)- Specifically marked time after 20 February 1847 e n d e d on 25 February 1847
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with the thrice-promised 26 February) in 1848, the period from 20-5 February ends with the 'gaiete de carnavaP of Frederic's stroll with Rosanette (11, 115). On 13 March 1848, Pellerin announces that he has begun a figure of the Republic (11, 115). At the time of Frederic's second visit to Dambreuse on 23 March 1848, the postponed date of the election is announced (11, 117), an event which occurred on iy March 1848 (A73, x) as did the announcement of the competition for a work of art depicting the Republic (A79, 98), so once again, Pellerin has taken no time at all to produce the painting which Frederic sees at Dambreuse's house on 23 March 1848 unless it is the Genie de la Revolution of 12 August 1843 (n> 4°)-
Frederic's reference to Delacroix and Hugo in the context of the number 100,000 is a cryptic allusion to the 100,000 people who demonstrated against the bonnets a poil of the National Guard on iy March 1848. The visit to the Club de PIntelligence of 23 March/April 1848 identifies Senecal as the only character associated with the 26 February date promised in 1847, a s w e ^ a s w ith t n e omitted 4 May/December which saw the only deaths on the Parisian boulevards in 1851. Senecal's role as an agent provocateur is visible at this 26 February/March/April 1848 point. Because the Club de PIntelligence visit occurs on the same evening that Rosanette defines the February Revolution as two months old, the time must be late April 1848, and the repetition, two nights later, of the statement that the Russian prince has just left, a statement first made on 13/23 February 1848, signals an equivalence. As Salammbo shows, the presence of a Russian indicates an equivalence of dates which are twelve days apart owing to the discrepancy between the Gregorian and Julian calendars in the nineteenth century. The 13/23 February/March/April/June coincidence at the time of the February Revolution makes the date of the argument over the gold sheep occur on a 13/23/25 February/March/April/June 1848. This abolishes the two-month interval between the two 'departures' of the Russian prince and brings about a coincidence of the date of the appearance of the Golden Fleece constellation on 23 March and its disappearance on 20/25 April according to Ovid (Fasti, 183-5, 243> 255)- Hence,
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the Club de l'lntelligence visit could be said to occur on the same day as the gold-sheep argument, on a 23 March/April which makes a mockery of Frederic's political ambitions, since 23 April 1848 was election day. Another coincidence, at a twenty-year/six-month remove, is the hilarity occasioned by the reference to the tete de veau which recalls the mirthful reaction to the news that the nouveau's name was Charbovari on 23 October 1828 in MB (1, 577).
Further coincidences arise through the multiplication of time. Rosanette and Clemence Vatnaz threaten a duel over Delmar on a 25 February which repeats the cachemire argument fought in identical circumstances on 25 February 1847, an<^ Rosanette's tears over Delmar's desertion to Clemence occur on a 23 March which saw the desertion of Clemence Daviou in 1847, a n d on a 13 April which saw Dussardier's vision of the bloodstained bayonets in the Rue Transnonain in 1834. Since Rosanette and Dussardier were born in the same year, 1819, both were fifteen in 1834, and 13 April 1834 saw the 'pacification' of Lyon on the same day riots broke out in Paris. Rosanette's 'defloration' in Lyon thus occurred on the night of 13-14 April 1834, and Dussardier's vision of bayonets/Rosalies on that date is a parallel to Rosanette/Hortense's experience at La CroixRousse on 14 April (11, 92, 128), which is the feast of la sainteLydwine, patron of syphilitics (Lasowski, 21). The period between the gold-sheep argument of 13/23/23 February/March/April 1848 and the Place du Carrousel episode of 20 June 1848 contains Rosanette's move to the Faubourg Poissonniere, Arnoux's saving of Dambreuse on 15 May 1848 during the invasion of the Assembly and Arnoux's appearance on the staircase some time after 21 May, since the Fete de la Concorde is mentioned (11, 122). Since this vaguely rendered period contains the 'logical' conception of Frederic Baslin on 15 May 1848, it is worth noting that, although Martinon is supposed to have been Dambreuse's constant companion since 23 March 1848 (11, 117), his presence was not noted at the time of the saving of Dambreuse; and although Hussonnet is supposed to have been Arnoux's constant companion since late May (11, 122), he is not at the Place du Carrousel on the night of 20-1
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June 1848 (n, 123). Rosanette is not at home on the evening of 21 June 1848 when Frederic visits her after spending the afternoon sleeping at his own apartment in the Rue Rumfort, despite what his concierge says in the early hours of 2g June 1848 (11, 136). Conspiracy theories concerning the red-bearded Aloysius Huber's role in the invasion of the Assembly on 13 May 1848 have abounded ever since the event itself (De Luna, 116; Hemmings, 23; A83, 52-3) and have recently been revived. Like the Senecal of 26 February 1848 (n, 118), Huber was a police spy who urged the mobs on during a demonstration over Poland, and the invasioon of the Assembly was subsequently used as a pretext for authoritarian repressions and a movement away from the Republicanism espoused during the February Days. 13 May is also the festival of Mercury, patron of thieves and of the lies told by those in commerce: on this day, merchants beg for gain in the coming year and for a cleansing of the perjuries of the past year. They also ask for a sanction for the perjuries of the year to come and for continued enjoyment of profits and cheating (Fasti, 311). To pose a birthdate of 13 February is to suggest a conception date of 13 May, a date associated with lies, frauds and trickery, both in terms of 1848 and in terms of Mercury's festival. To suggest that the conception date is itself a red herring is to complicate the game even further. Since the pregnancy announced at the end of 1848/beginning of 1849 through a coincidence with the Rateau Proposition does not produce issue until 13 February 1831 (n, 148), the pregnancy is of a biologically impossible length (thirty-three months) and can be compared to the impossibly delayed byelection for which Frederic is supposed to be a candidate from May 1850 to the same time in 1851 (11, 142, 148). Frederic Baslin's eight-month life ends on 13 October 1831, at which time Mme Dambreuse is trying on her first 'robe de couleur' (n, 153, 156). The period of a widow's mourning is equivalent to the period of gestation (Fasti, 5), so Mme Dambreuse's eight-month/ 243-day mourning period must equal a possible period of gestation, one equivalent to that estimated by Hortense's doctors for Napoleon III, from c. 20 August 1810 to 20 April 1811 (DD, 5). This period adds the time between 13 and 21 June 1848/1830 to
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the possible conception times of Frederic Baslin, and what / j May and 21 June have in common is the name Aloysius, that of the mouchard who led the demonstrators into the Assembly trap and that of the saint who is patron of students and whose father opposed his vocation (Delaney, 261). Hussonnet, the big little goose, has a name which makes him a diminutive of Champfleury-alias-Husson and of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, described by Punch as 'hatched from goose-egg in eagle's nest' (DD, 53). The last defiant words of the Bohemian Huss at the stake were: 'You may burn Huss [goose] now, but Luther [swan] will follow' (N. Jacobs, 28). This apocryphal story is a reminder that Auguste/Gustave is he who interprets and prophesies through birds, and that the swans and eagles of the Romantic/heroic world remain abstractions in the world of the goose/peacock. Frederic's own movements on 21 June 1848 after the lunch with Arnoux are a mystery: he is supposed to have returned to the Rue Rumfort after his guard duty on the night of 20-1 June 1848 and to have slept until seven p.m., at which time he went to Rosanette's apartment to find her absent (n, 123). Yet his concierge tells Louise Roque, on 29 June 1848, that Frederic has not slept at home for nearly three months (n, 136) - that is, since early April 1848. Flaubert always makes the gestation period indeterminate through the multiplication of time: this reflects the impossibility of ever determining paternity. We can have no conception of conception. However, since pregnancy is 'proven' by yellow facial blotches and produces a yellowish-red object which becomes a yellowish-red painting, the force which achieves this very 'maculate' conception is Bonapartist desire. And since the night of 20-1 June 1848, second anniversary of Rosanette's Saturnalia during the 'forbidden' period, is also the anniversary of the conception of the King of Rome, born 20 March 1811, the engendering activities of the first Emperor also fall within the conception period, a fact reinforced by the observation that the names in Frederic's life (Marie, Louise, Rose and Hortense) are also the names of greatest importance in Napoleon's life. And the names in the life of the 'adoptive father' associated with the
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conception dates of Napoleon III are Louise, Catherine and Eleonore, those of the mother of Napoleon's first son, born exactly fifteen years before Gustave Flaubert on 13 December 1806 (Aretz, 196-7), and forty years before Mme Eleonore's death on 14 December 1846. The solstitial period of 20-9 June 184.8 is one of the great tenday time runs, comparable to that of 20-g March/June 1841 in BeP or that of 25 April-4 May 241 B.C. in Salammbo. Only one day remains completely unaccounted for in each of these tenday periods, but whereas in BeP it is the 26 March/June which sees Bouvard's selling of the farm twenty years later, here it is 27 June 1848, the day after Roque's murder of the blond adolescent (11, 131). On 27 June 1801, Cairo fell to British forces and the French evacuated Egypt (AF, 200) after Napoleon's desertion of his troops on 22 August ijgg (Hudson, 94). It is now that the reason for the displacement of a day for the death of Dussardier on 5 December 1851 begins to emerge, for the May/December parallel makes his death coincide with that of Napoleon-Charles on 5 May 180J and that of Napoleon on 5 May 1821, as well as with Napoleon's desertion of the Grande Armee in Russia on 5 December 1812. The parallel between / May 1847 and the beginning of Flaubert's 'June Days' is announced by the repetition of Arnoux's trick of sending Frederic on a wild goose chase so that he can spend twenty-four hours with a woman (n, 123). Arnoux's reference to his 'pauvre pere' at lunch-time on 21 June 1848 is a reminder of the ten-day drop which made 13 January 1847 'equal' to 23 June 1846; a similar displacement makes this the seventh anniversary of the black armband of // June 1841. The inversion of the solstices at Rosanette's Saturnalia makes the night at the Place du Carrousel the second anniversary of the masked ball of 20-1 June/December 1846. Rosanette's expulsion of the old lady in black on a day that was 13 January 1847 ^iA© 23 June 1846 is relevant to the misleading account of time afforded by the narration of the Fontainebleau episode. Frederic and Rosanette leave Paris on 22 June 1848, and not much more is said about that day than that children play at 'barres' to the sound of a splashing
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fountain in the evening. This allusion to Napoleon's favourite game (Aretz, 305) in the context of a fountain which is a synecdoche of Fontainebleau is productive of ironies: the place named for 'resolute battle' (AL, 453; CY? 314) is the locus of a desertion from the battlefield on the thirty-third anniversary of Napoleon's final abdication signed at the Elysee Palace. It is also the seventh anniversary of the breaking of the Flaubert heirlooms during the journey to Chavignolles (11, 207). What the narration hides/reveals in cachemire fashion through its repetition of 'un jour' is the fact that sight-seeing occurs on only two days, 23-4 June 1848, and that the reason the lovers neglect many famous sites on 25 June 1848 (11, 126) is that the calash journey of that day is taking them towards Dussardier and Paris. Rosanette gives her age as twenty-nine on 23 June 1848, Josephine's birthday, and it was Josephine's substitution of the year 1767 for 1763 as her date of birth at the time of her marriage to 'Napolione Buonaparte' that gave her the age of twenty-nine and the Emperor a pretext for a long-premeditated divorce (Aretz, 91). Situating 'the Emperor's favourite game' on the night of the final abdication after Waterloo and on the eve of a visit to the place of the first abdications of 4/6/11 April 1814 is a way of indicating the deviousness and theatricality of the Napoleonic enterprise. The Rose/Hortense who gives her age as twentynine on Josephine's birthday describes her own suicide on 2 3 June 1848 on the day after an abdication. And now the superimposition of 23 June 1846 on 13 January 1847 m a k e s sense also: the lady in black ejected by Rosanette (11, 56) is now associated with the mother whose absence makes her daughter 'better off': 'sans la mienne ...' (11, 128). The Empress Josephine is Rosanette/Hortense's mother, as well as being Rosanette herself. 13 January is the coincidence of Flaubert's baptism in 1822 and of Octavius' receiving of the title 'Augustus', 'a name that ranks with Jove supreme' (Fasti, 45). Rosanette's expulsion of a mother on a day which also coincides with Josephine's birthday implies that Imperial ambitions bordering on selfdeification cannot afford the embarrassing presence of all-toomortal mothers.
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Since the missing 2y June 1848 coincides with a iy June which is also a iy December, the death of Napoleon's faithless wife who was born on Gustave's official birthday is also commemorated here. Marie-Louise was born on 12 December iygi and died on iy December i8^y (Turnbull, 10, 292). She received absolution on the anniversary of the Bonaparte-Beauharnais divorce of 16 December i8og, exactly a year after Frederic was reunited with the Arnoux and met Eugene. Once again, the Rosepeacock portrait commemorates a French Empress. However, the main factor in the suppression of 2y June 184.8 is the massacre of protesting workers after the armistice of 26 June 1848. Cavaignac's 'butchery' during the June Days is one of the blackest marks against the army's name, especially against that of the gardes mobiles created on 26 February 1848. The gardes
mobiles of the Rue Vivienne, where the deaths of the coup will occur on 26 June 1848 (11, 130), are a prolepsis, and Flaubert's opinion of the mobiles' butchery is made explicit in his response (11, 753) to Sainte-Beuve's criticism of the Barbarians' torturing of their Carthaginian prisoners and murder of Giscon after the funerals of 26-y June/ September. Giscon's murder replaces Archbishop Aifre's. At the Dambreuse dinner of Wednesday 28 June 1848, Paul de Gremonville is introduced for the first time and referred to as 'le diplomate entrevu au baP (11, 132). Although Frederic saw Mme Dambreuse talking to 'un diplomate en habit bleu' (n, 95) at the reception of Wednesday 30 June i84y, la saint-Paul (AF, 203),
Gremonville was not mentioned at the Dambreuse ball of 24 February i84y. The only other ball Frederic has attended is Rosanette's, where he met a Young Turk who was the son of a banker and who had a habit of noticing what was going on behind the scenes (11, 54). Gremonville acts in tandem with Dambreuse as though he were his alter ego at the 1848 dinner (11, 134-5), and it is he who raises the subject of duelling in the presence of the two 'combatants', Frederic and Alfred de Cisy (11, 133). The Young Turk and his debardeuse mistress seem to be co-tenants of the apartment at the Rue de Laval, since the debardeuse claimed that Arnoux gave the crockery to 'nous' (11, 53) and waved to the
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departing guests from the 'fenetre', not the 'vasistas' (11, 54). Though the poverty of his costume disgusts the ladies, the Young Turk finds an admirer in the sycophantic Dr Des Rogis who flatters the great (11, 51), and Mile Vatnaz's comment that Rosanette met the Russian prince in the summer of 1846 makes the 'courses du Champ de Mars' (11, 101) coincide with the ball, a coincidence indicated through the figure of Georgine Aubert, reclining 'comme en plein hiver' (11, 83). Louise Roque's humiliation on la saint Pierre, 2g June 1848, brings about a coincidence of time and names on this thirtythird anniversary of the end of the Hundred Days: like St Peter, whose name is a synonym for hers, Mile Roque weeps bitter tears as she sits on a rock after the fall of the guillotine-window in the Rue Rumfort (11, 136). While Peter wept for his own betrayal of the Son of God (Voragine, 331), Louise weeps for Frederic's betrayal of her, and Catherine's assurances that there are plenty of others are a prophecy of the second generation of the imperial family. Since the 'voix furieuse' tells Louise that Frederic has not slept at home for nearly three months, since early April 1848, the time of Alfred's death, Frederic's whereabouts on 21 June 1848 remain a mystery. Flaubert's plans stipulate 'un jour vers le milieu de decembre (1848)' for the information that Arnoux is keeping the Bordelaise (G-M, 31), news which coincides with the change in 'La direction du Pouvoir' and Arnoux's consequent desire to open a great military hat shop (11, 137). Louis Napoleon's election is therefore an embracing of the Tramp Venus and a simultaneous movement towards militarism. Frederic had noticed Rosanette's more rounded proportions without being able to define the change in her before this point (11, 137). Rosanette's emerging maternity coincides with the emergence of the second Bonaparte generation. The pregnancy is announced on a night which coincides with the year's end and with the news of Deslauriers's arrest over 'Faffaire des carabines interceptees dernierement a Troyes' (11, 137). 2g June 1848 is followed by 2Q/31 December 1848 and then, after a passing reference to the Conservatoire incident of 13 June i84g (11,
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14096), by the Martinon/Dambreuse wedding of May 1850 (n, 141).
13 June 1848 was the date of Louis Napoleon's withdrawal from the Assembly after an argument over his right to be elected in view of the law exiling all members of the imperial family in perpetuity; 13 June 1849 is another date of a political pretext. The protests over the illegality of the Roman expedition were made the excuse for the closing of the clubs and for repressive legislation. The by-elections of 10 March 1850 saw a Socialist victory which produced the infamous suffrage law of 31 May 1850, a move by the parti de Vordre to disenfranchise some three million of the poorest workers (RP, 98). This law in turn was to become Morny's bait for a trap which produced the coup of December 1851 (ibid., 108). Flaubert's sleight of hand via the Rateau Proposition, which makes the announcement of Rosanette's pregnancy occur at the end of December 1848 AND the end of January 1849, makes it coincide with the moment when Louis Napoleon and Morny threw in their lot together, before the end ofJanuary 1849 (RP> 93), an event rendered in the novel by the appearance of the two Augustes at the Vatnaz raout of the night following the announcement of Rosanette's pregnancy. An impossibly long, thirty-three month gestation period is followed by an impossibly times by-election announced by Deslauriers on the night following Cecile Dambreuse's marriage of May 1850. Deslauriers' 'impending' by-election announced in May 1850, but which has not been held by 15 February 1851, is first proposed after the 'suspension universelle des choses' (11, 141) which accompanies Frederic's 'victory' over Mme Dambreuse. The byelections of 4 June 1848 and iy September 1848 both resulted in the election of Louis Napoleon; those of 10 March and 28 April 1850 were the last held until the 29 February 1852 elections for the Corps legislatif. Deslauriers's account of his life up to the calf's head banquet in London on 30 January 1849 (11, 142) brings the news that Senecal is awaiting transportation at Belle-Isle. SenecaPs reappearance towards the middle of January 1851 (n, 144) is no less mysterious than Deslauriers's release 'faute de
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preuves' after the carbines of Troyes (n, 142) - or Senecal's after he was caught carrying gunpowder yet released for lack of evidence between 6 June and 5 October 184J. Senecal's blue-black coat was 'turned' on 5 May 1847 after his dismissal by Arnoux on 4 May 1847: his conversion commemorates both the 'red' Godefroy Cavaignac and the blue-coated Napoleon Bonaparte, both of whom died on a 5 May, in 1845 and 1821 respectively. Walewski's 4 May 1818 birthday associates the date with illegitimacy, and his death on 28 September 1868 (Aretz, 218) was the loss of a second illegitimate brother for Louis Napoleon after Morny's on 10 March 1863 (RP, 254). The 4 May of the expelled Barbarians' arrival in Sicca in Salammbo (1, 702), and of Napoleon's arrival in Elba (Hudson, 178) poses the question of legitimacy and right. Morny's trend-setting funeral on 13 March 1865 (RP, 254) is reflected in the thirteen black carriages at Dambreuse's funeral, also at the Madeleine, on 14 February 1851 (11, 146). Morny may have been a bastard in more ways than one in Flaubert's vocabulary, but his passing was a bad day for France, as is indicated by the placing of an impossibly situated election after the 10 March 1850 which contained a prolepsis of Morny's death. 26 February 1848 was the first proclamation of the Republic whose official announcement occurred on 4 May 1848. Senecal's 'rehearsal' for the Assembly trap of/j May 1848 on that very 26 February 1848 indicates that his dismissal by Arnoux on 4 May 1847 ls linked to his act of coat-turning. Yet Senecal's coat was never really 'turned' at all: Bonapartism was as bloody and authoritarian as early Socialism. Both were products of the fantasies of the dispossessed. The 26 February 1847 of Clemence Vatnaz's promised revenge on Rosanette was realised a year later when the gardes mobiles were created on 26 February 1848,
the same day the death penalty for political offences was abolished, for the gardes mobiles Frederic sees at the top of the Rue Vivienne on 26 June 1848 (n, 140) are the same forces who massacred over 3,000 rebels after the armistice of that same 26 June (Duveau, 155-6). Roque's murder of the blond adolescent on that day makes fratricide and infanticide coincide, and, since Frederic's reposoir established a coincidence of 26 February/
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April/June 1848, the Rouen massacres of 26-8 April 184.8 ordered by Senard are linked to Senecal's gunpowder experiments of 6 June 1842 by Senard's election as President of the Assembly on 6 June 1848. This is the day of Gorju's departure for the 'fameux coup de chien' in BeP (11, 259). Since Senecal's murder of Dussardier occurs on a 5 May/ December 1851 which is historically a 4 December 1831, the equivalence of I—J May/December means that Senecal's role as an 'agent' (11, 160) is identified with the 4-5 May of his dismissal and unsuccessful appeal to the Frederic who introduced him to 'spying' in the first place. Frederic/Henry V is outfoxed by Arnoux/Bonaparte in the rehearsal for the coup of 7—5 December 1851. Senecal's reappearance occurs at the time of Dambreuse's burning of his second will on Marshal Ney's birthday, 10 January 1851, a week after Changarnier's dismissal on 3 January 1851, and this suggests that the releases, 'faute de preuves', of Deslauriers and Senecal have been secured by a similar burning of documents thanks to the 'haute place' resembling Morny's after the coup (RP, 112), finally occupied by Hussonnet (11, 161). Sometimes the censorship of the 'Blue Pencil Regime' can have unexpected results. It is with the events of 1851 that Flaubert brings the patterns and omissions of the temporal structure of ESn to a climax. Dambreuse's illness beginning on 3 January is followed by his death on 12 February and funeral on 14 February 1851 (11, 144—7). The coincidence of 14 and IJ February is indicated by Mme Dambreuse's interview with Adolphe Langlois on the day of Frederic Baslin's birth at some time between la saint-AdoIphe, 14 February, and the Lupercalia, / j February 1851 (11, 147). Since Dambreuse's first attack of breathlessness and the conception of Frederic Baslin both date from the Assembly invasion of /j May 1848, the demise of the parti de Vordre and the emergence of illegitimacy occur at the same time. Flaubert associates the Schlesingers with the demise of legitimacy by placing the death of the infant at the time of Mme Dambreuse's emergence from mourning and five years before Marie-Adele Schlesinger learned of her own illegitimacy on the occasion of her marriage around the middle of October 1856 (G-G, 134). 4 October 1851 is
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also the time of the prince-president's setting of the trap based on the suffrage law on 31 May 1850. In the 'June Days' of 1851, Clemence Vatnaz's persecution of Rosanette is made parallel to Mme Dambreuse's persecution of Marie Arnoux, since the 'one' bill mentioned by Rosanette on 31 December 1848 repeats Marie's lie of 2/g April 1847, and the 'real' four bills Marie signed become the 'real' Jive bills signed by Rosanette, and which are shortly afterwards referred to as four bills (11, 150). This hesitation between the numbers 1, 4 and 5 is the model for the parallel time sequences of 1-3 May 1847 and I-J December 1851, and foreshadows the substitution of 5 December 1851 for the historically accurate 4 December 1851 of the boulevard deaths (G-M, 49). On 10/14 June 1851 (n, 150), a double date produced by the end of the Arnoux/'Lui' joke in 1842, Maitre Athanase Gautherot's writ arrives, together with the threat of a saisie on the morrow. On 11/13 June 1851, Athanase Gautherot appears in person, and attempts to defraud Rosanette through the Dittmer landscapes (11, 150-1). 11 June I8JI was also the moment of Charles Hugo's sentencing to six months' imprisonment after the failure of his father's court defence of a newspaper article in UEvenement (JR, 112). 11 June 1841 saw the mourning-band shock at the Palais-Royal theatre. 11/15 June 1851 is also Frederic's last view of the Arnoux couple and of Arnoux's 'rosicrucian' crown composed of 'boutons roses' and the reflection of gold crosses, symbols of the much-desired Legion d'Honneur. 7 5 June is a l s o o n e °fthe epochs of the Islamic era based on an alternative dating of Mohammed's flight to Medina to 15 June 622 (Bickerman, 74). Arnoux's venereal sores (11, 151) have a long metaphorical pedigree in Flaubert's opus: the 'boutons roses' appear on the foreheads of fauns in TSAu (1, 517) and on Pecuchet's brow (11, 269) in Flaubert's last novel. They are also associated with the 'bonnet rouge de zouave' from North Africa worn by Mignot (11, 137) and by the presyphilitic Pecuchet (11, 235). The appearance of Athanase Gautherot on the day of Arnoux's 'coronation' conveys two of the sources of the malady through the calendar of saints. Athanase belongs to 2 May, date of Marie's humiliation at the
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Champ de Mars in 1847, and Gautherot to g April, the day in 1847 when Marie began threading a rosarium from Frederic's rose garden. The appearance in the Rue de Fleurus of Ste Genevieve with an apronful of roses and a spindle under her arm shows that Arnoux's fate is a revenge both for the 'engarlanding' of Mignot (n, 155) and for Elisa Schlesinger, for these two ingredients of the rosary are the traditional symbols of St Elisabeth (Hangen, 97). IJ June I8JI was Trinity Sunday; 11 June I 334 w a s St Roseline's translation and the day John XXII extended the Feast of the Trinity to the whole church. The roses and spindle are also in honour of Roseline's secondary feast on Trinity Sunday (Martin-Chauffier, 23). Nothing happens on 12/16 June and 13/17 June I8JI in the narration of the events of Rosanette's saisie, but the silence over the latter date will be filled by the episode of Dussardier's saving of Rosanette through the coincidence of 77/27 June 1385 created by the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. This leaves only 12/16 June unaccounted for, so the gap in the legend of Napoleonic succession associated with the departure for Waterloo is repeated in the text. What Louis Napoleon did not see the reader will not see. 16 June 1811 was also Hortense Bonaparte's last public appearance in Paris before the birth of Morny (RP, 3), so another 'unwitnessed' situation goes 'unrecorded' by Flaubert's text. The silence concerning 13/17 June, a date which is also 27 June, repeats the silence concerning 27 June 184.8 in the novel and coincides with the peacock portrait and Poulette article of 27 June 1847. 27 June 1851 is the date on which Leonie Biard sent eight years' worth of her accumulated love letters from Victor Hugo to her rival, Juliette Drouet, Hugo's maitresse en titre (JR, 113). Juliette received those letters on 28 June 1851, the day of Gautherot's qfficheur and of the revelation that Rosanette Bron and Hortense Baslin are one. This anniversary of the Dambreuse dinner party on the night of 28—g June 1848 also saw the humiliation of Louise Roque and M. Roque's reference to the portrait. The superimpositions of 14/18/28 June 1851 make the date one of humiliation for Louise Roque, for Juliette Drouet, who wandered the streets of Paris after the shock of receiving
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the love letters (JR, 113) and for Napoleon Bonaparte, who received Fouche's order to quit France on 28 June 1815 (Rose, 11, 517). Since it also anticipates by one year the 28 June 1852 on which Louise Colet became Musset's mistress (C11, 888), there is some humiliation for Flaubert as well. It is with the five-day time sequence of Dussardier's saving of Rosanette/Hortense that the five-day time run of Rosanette's 'saisie' is completed. On 26 June 1851, Dussardier learns that the sale is due to occur on 30 June 1851, so he withdraws his life savings from the bank. On 27 June 1851, he gives the 4,000 francs to Frederic, thus increasing his contribution to Rosanette's welfare to 4600 francs and thereby saving both Flaubert's annee maudite, 1846, and Leonie Biard for her spiteful revenge on her rival. 28 and 2g June are the silent days of this time sequence, but the superimposition of 14 and 18 June on 28 June means that it coincides with the revelation that Rosanette is Hortense and with the humiliation ofjuliette, Flaubert and Napoleon. The second silent day, ig/2g June 1831, the last of the Hundred Days of 1815, coincides with Louise Roque's humiliation in 1848 and signals a coincidence in terms of Flaubert's biography. On Thursday 26 June 1831, third anniversary of Archbishop Affre's death on the barricades of Paris, Louise Colet made a pilgrimage to Croisset and was forcibly ejected by an irate Flaubert (Cn, 812). On Thursday 2g June 1848, Louise Roque was 'guillotined' by Frederic's concierge/gatekeeper. Since Mme la Guillotine was invented by Dr Louis, after whom it was first styled 'Louisette', the 'execution' of Louise Roque/ Revoil is attributed to the lady's own naivete; but Gustave's own brutality and ferocity are not excused for all that (n, 136). Dussardier's gift of 77/27 June is the redemption both of Leonie Biard (for her humiliation of a rival) and of whoever was responsible for the death of Afire twenty-four hours after he was shot on 25 June 1848. The reference to the smiling portrait of Mgr Aifre in the Rue de Fleurus on 11/13 June 1851 signals a reconciliation through redemption, and Dussardier's desire for death on 17/27 June 1851 shows that the Redeemer is preparing himself for the ultimate act of sacrifice (11, 153). In La Cousine Bette, 30 June 1841 is the date of the police trap
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which ensnares Hulot and Valerie/Hugo and Leonie (Comedie humaine, vn, 303). By preventing the sale of Rosanette/Hortense/Valerie/Leonie of 30 June 1851, Dussardier/Flaubert saves Victor Hugo from Balzac's rivalry. Frederic Baslin's suffering and death on 14-15 October 1851 are followed by Mme Dambreuse's first 'robe de couleur', Frederic's calumny of Dussardier and the news that Regimbart lives in the Rue de L'Empereur in Montmartre. Roses, violets and camellias form a reposoir on the day of the October Horse (Frazer, 627) and la sainte-Therese, a feast commemorating the great rift in time of 1582. Teresa of Avila died on 4 October 1582; unlike Francis of Assisi, who died on 3 October 1226 and is commemorated on 4 October, Teresa was not celebrated on 5 October, for her death occurred on the day preceding 5/15 October 1582. The 'next day' for Teresa was 15 October 1582: she is the saint who straddles the gulf of lost time. Frederic's evocation of the vigil beside Dambreuse's body on the night of 12—13 February 1851 (11, 156) as he watches the child's corpse on 15 October 1851 draws attention to the eight-month period of Mme Dambreuse's mourning. This establishes the possibility that Frederic Baslin's gestation period was eight months, as was Louis Napoleon's. It also points to the 23 April/3 May/ig August of the Alhambra, so that a 15/25 October/5 November/11/21 February pattern exists for the coincidence of the baby's death and Mme Dambreuse's first 'robe de couleur': // February is the eve of the anniversary of Dambreuse's death. When, on 4 October 1851, the date Rosanette wins her case against Arnoux, the President declared himself in favour of abrogating the 31 May suffrage law, he knew that he was placing his opponents of both the left and the right in an impossible position and preparing the way for a coup (RP, 107-8). It was metaphorical clots of milk, associated through a pun with Chaillot, his place of birth, that ended Frederic Baslin's young life (n, 153), so it is the things which the second generation of the imperial family absorbed with their mother's milk which caused the death of the French Republic. With the disclosure of Regimbart's address in the Rue de l'Empereur on 5/15 October 1851 comes the realisation that the disgruntled
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rumblings of Bonapartism issue from the mouths of a tribe of old gigolos like the fathers of Charles Bovary and Charles Deslauriers, who have bided their time in anything but silence, spitting into the cinders and regretting the old days of imperialist glory while wives like Olympe Regimbart support their nostalgia through drudgery. Through the coincidence of 4/14 and 5/15 October, Flaubert associates the 13 vendemiaire of Napoleon Bonaparte's 'whiff of grapeshot' with his nephew's machinations in preparation for the coup which Flaubert's novel dramatises through a repeated confusion of 4 and 5 in December 1851. The motif of the turncoat associated with Napoleon's willingness to support either the sections or the Convention (Hudson, 57) will be associated with the blue-coated Deslauriers's marriage to his best friend's fiancee, and with Senecal's murder of Dussardier, in such a way as to illustrate the vulnerability of the man of principle when confronted by the uncommitted opportunism of the Bonapartist parvenu.
By placing the death of Dussardier on the day Napoleon deserted the Grande Armee during the retreat from Moscow in 1812, Flaubert creates another of his holes in time on 4 December 1851, the unspeakable anniversary of Marshal Ney's trial by his peers on 4 December 1815. The dozen determined men of Dussardier's Luxembourg fantasy (11, 93) turn out to be the twelve who formed Ney's firing squad in the Luxembourg Gardens (PY, 118). 'Le Brave des Braves' who brought up the rearguard on the return from Moscow would never surrender to the enemy (PY, in): only his own could kill the spirit of the old hussar on whom Dussardiev's name is based. Both Balzac's Treize and the phalange of Flaubert's novel are based on Napoleon's twenty-six marshals, real heroes who reflected the diversity of human character and experience. As Ney's story shows, the 'Judas' character is not the Other, but a role eventually forced on every man of action. Dussardier's commitment to action leads inevitably to self-betrayal, but his action aims at authenticity — as opposed to the posturing of the second Auguste, Delmar. Mme Dambreuse's revenge on Marie Arnoux dates from
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18 October I8JI (n, 156), anniversary of'la revocation de l'edit de Nantes' (11, 59) in 1685. Mozart's death on 5 December iygi (AF, 370) makes Dussardier's death occur at a time of musical silence near an Opera House famous for attempts on the lives of Bonapartes. In MB, the festival of the amorous god Faunus and his attendant Luperci on 5 December (OCD, 432) introduced the Blind Man to Emma's world of illusion. The fathers' sins belong to this secondary Lupercalia, as is indicated by Frederic Baslin's / j October death at the end of the warring season symbolised by the October Horse (OCD, 651). However, the novel does not end with the betrayal of the marriage/murder but with the repetition of a 22 which starts up the music again. Eugene's illness in 1848 ended on a day which coincided with the death of Caroline-Josephine Flaubert, and Marie's second visit to the Rue Rumfort occurs on the twentyfirst anniversary of that death, on 22 March i86y (11, 160). The violettes of Attis' castration on 22 March (Frazer, 459) are translated into the 'voilette de dentelle noire' which masks both the face and the white hair of Frederic's ideal woman, and the allusion to Werther and Charlotte commemorates Goethe's death on 22 March 1832 (AF, 99), as well as reestablishing the models through whom life is lived. Since Werther is a synonym of Auguste (Long, 198) and Charlotte is the Fleuriot-Cambremer on whom all the Carolines are based (1, 11), this allusion brings together the mother, sister and niece-daughter with the Muse who is Caroline-AugustineElisa. The novel's final allusion to the fete at Saint-Cloud establishes Marie as Sarah la Bohemienne, source of 'cette splendeur de sa peau brune' and patron goddess of the writer's only home country: La Boheme (n, 677). The Bohemian Hussonnet was well chosen as the messenger who conveyed the information that Marie is Angele, the messenger, as well as being a nonMarie who yet forms part of a triad or pentad of Maries celebrated on the day after Sarah is honoured on 24 May. When Marie's dark hair has gone, it is only her skin which remains as the link between her body and Frederic's name. Separating the two codas with which ESn ends is an interval
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of twenty months that repeats the truncated life span of the 'original' Caroline Flaubert and ends with the reconciliation of two friends on 22 November 1858, la sainte-Cecile. When all is said
and done, it is the Napoleonic myth which survives as the basis of all relationship, for this seventeenth anniversary of the break with Rosanette contains a reference to the night of 27-8 November 1851 when Charles Deslauriers seduced his friend's discarded mistress one week prior to marrying his friend's fiancee. Napoleon Bonaparte's desire remains the ineradicable model for the relationships between males in Frederic's disinherited generation: the mud of the streetwalkers' haunt around the Palais-Royal still clings to the mixture of prostitution and patriotism that is Bonapartist desire. If Napoleon Bonaparte's treatise on patriotism on 27 November iygy is dedicated to the unnamed prostitute who initiated the future emperor on the night of 22 November iygy (Aretz, 37-9), then so is Flaubert's chef-d'oeuvre, which draws to a close on la sainte-Cecile, 1868 with the anecdote of a failure to perceive the difference between the brothel and the harem. Mistaking geese for swans is a liability which becomes an asset on the day dedicated to the memory of Eugene Delacroix, for Penury is the mother of Wisdom when it comes to the scrutiny of Zorai'de Turc's premises from the vantage point where the Cygne de la Croix and the Signe-Delacroix have their meeting place. The final riddle of Zoraide Turc's establishment, in the context of Delacroix's death on 13 August 1863 (AF, 250), is answered in terms of the reference to the night of 15-16 September 1840, three years after the farcical episode of foiled adolescent lust. Since the picnic of 12 August 1843/14 September 1844 established an equivalence of the omitted 13 August with the 15 September of the novel's opening, and since the calendar change 0(3/14 September 1752 establishes another coincidence, it follows that the moment for Frederic when 'le premier de ses reves ... s'ecroulait' (11, 13) on the night of 15—16 September with the news that Deslauriers could not join him in Paris was also the night of 13—14 August and of 4—5 September 1840. 5 September
1840 was the date of Elisa's marriage to Maurice Schlesinger, so Frederic's crumbled dreams concern the fact that Gustave met
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Elisa before she was married to Maurice, but at a time when she was already the Mater Dolorosa of 15 September (AF, 284). The festival of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, instituted by Pius VII in 1814 in protest against Napoleon's persecution of the church (MW, 219), repeats the 'seven' in Elisa's name and associates it with an oath of silence. Sunday 13 August 1837, though a year too late for Flaubert's first meeting with Maurice and Elisa, is nonetheless the moment of the visit to Zoraide Turc's establishment, and its coincidence with 15 September 184.0 through the picnic substitution of 1843/4 makes the novel's first day coincide with the final allusion of its last day, as well as with the opening date of BeP, Sunday 13 August 1837. Through the 13/23 February/August coincidence of Jules's meeting with Artemise and Lucinde in ESi, the visit 'chez la Turque' is another version of Gustave's depucelage of 23 February i83Q in the 'Institut de la Rue du Platre' (Douchin, 57), an event commemorated by Frederic's depucelage on 23 February 184.8. The brothel allusion with which the novel begins and ends indicates the bizarre relationship between autobiography and that other fictional form, the novel, for Zoraide's establishment becomes the locus of the denial of what 'really happened' in favour of forms of approximation involving hints, nearmisses and denials. ESw ends with the relationship between males, with a homosexuality signalled on the night of 15—16 September 1840 by the sharing of a cloak and by the occultation of the events inside the Cygne de la Croix, that inn whose name is both a pun and the sign of a secret brotherhood. The non-narrated events inside the inn are Flaubert's salute to Balzac, for the inn at Nogent substitutes for an inn at Poitiers where Lucien de Rubempre sold himself to Vautrin/Herrera for 15,000 francs on the night of 15—16 September 1822 in Illusions perdues
(Comedie humaine, v, 651, 689). The homosexual encounter equated with a Faustian signing of the pact and a 'preuve d'obeissance' (ibid., v, 708) is an example of two-timing in Balzac's novel, for Lucien has accepted an invitation to dine at the home of his former mistress and her husband on the night of his encounter with Vautrin. Frederic's view of Deslauriers
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as a more attainable version of Marie Arnoux is another example of two-timing: the 5 September 1840 date of Elisa's marriage to Maurice Schlesinger is the moment at which, with the coming of 5/16 September, Frederic sees his dreams crumble. It is most surprising to see the Flaubert famed for impersonality encoding the dates, 5 September/December, of the marriages of Elisa and Louise in the context of his protagonist's disappointment. The secret brotherhood signalled by the Cygne de la Croix (CI671, 150) is that of the literary confraternity, and Flaubert posits a cause-and-effect relationship between vocation and bachelordom in the society of his times. A further sense of finality through the revolution of time is afforded by the fact that the time span of the action proper of ESu, from 15 September 1840 to 22 November 1868, is also that of
the solar cycle, the twenty-eight-year period in which the correlation between day and date repeats itself, as Flaubert's notes on time for BeP acknowledge: 'Le cycle solaire est une revolution de 28 annees' (de Biasi, 920). This solar cycle is the basis for the time span of Flaubert's three great 'contemporary' novels, Madame Bovaty, UEducation sentimentale (1869) and Bouvard et Pecuchet. MILLE GHOSES SEGONDAIRES
It is possible to read the names of many of the characters in ESu as references to chronological systems. Olympe refers to the Olympias/ Olympiads generally associated with the summer setting of the battle at Thermopylae (11, 659) and referred to both in the carnets and in BeP (de Biasi, 919; 11, 140). References in ESn to kaolin and the breaking of a parasol, combined with Elisabeth-Olympe Louise Roque's crossing of Paris on 29 June 1848, suggest the etymology of the Skirophoria (Parke, 161) - of the month of that name which was associated with the period following the summer solstice — and the imagery of Louise's journey repeats that of Salammbo's at the time of the Eleusinian mysteries at the autumn equinox (1, 754). Flaubert looked for the bridge from which Athenian 'gars' shouted obscenities at women attending the Mysteries at Eleusis (11, 651).
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Arnoux is a name which combines the symbols of Imperial Rome (eagle) and Republican Rome (wolf), and may suggest the different calendars of those eras, especially in view of the references to Romulus and Numa Pompilius in MB. The 2 September 1847 encounter on the anniversary of Actium in ESu suggests the beginning of an Augustan age assimilated to the moment near Grenoble when Royalist soldiers became imperial soldiers once again. The doubling of Baptiste and Charles may refer to the summer solstice and to Charlemagne's recognition of the earlier date for the birth of Christ respectively, and Roque may indicate St Peter's role as the replacement of Augustus in the calendar of saints. Delphi's regulation of the religious cult that first created the calendar in Greece (Nilsson, 366) accounts for Delphine's name, for Delphine is first introduced on 13 January 1847, and Flaubert defined this as the 'jour de l'an de l'annee grecque' (11, 622) when he was in Greece in 1851. Deslauriers's name refers to the beginning of the Roman year on / March, when fresh laurels were placed on public buildings (JJB, 2), but also to the Lares from which the name is derived (CY, 173), and Clemence to Clement of Alexandria's establishment of Anno Christi (JJB, 22). Cisy reflects Julius Caesar's calendar reforms in 46—5 B.C. (ibid., 2). Between the celebrations of Actium on 14/27 February (Richmond, 171, 178), / August (Voragine, 406), 13-15 August (AF, 250) and so on, we are able to glimpse the vanity of Augustus' attempts to monopolise the calendar through the victory at Actium of 2 September 31 BC (AF, 271). By placing events associated with the Arnoux, Dambreuse and Roque menages in periods of 'lost time' (Richmond, 142), Flaubert is able to suggest the 'mille choses secondaires' which make interpretation of any situation difficult. The basis of St Cecilia's patronage of music and musicians was the fact that she did not hear the sounds of nuptial music, but sat apart, singing to God in her heart (Delaney, 141). The final message of la sainte-Cecile is that it never comes: if 16 September is the real date (ibid., 140), then neither the beginning nor the end of the novel is as deaf and blind as the demands of censorship would indicate. The only
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event which occurs on the real sainte-Cecile is revealed by Mme Moreau on iy September 1844: M. Roque has just married his servant in order to legitimise his child (11, 41) on the 5/16 September anniversary of the Schlesinger marriage. Self-censorship does not have a purely political basis: the date-place nexus is an extremely threatening one in personal affairs, which is why alibis are used far more often in the amorous than in the politico-legal register: 'Many of the men who made the success of the President inevitable were later to denounce Bonapartism as a political whore, but they had nearly all visited the lady in their youth'(WHCS, 68).
CHAPTER 6
The Hundred Days of 'Bouvard et Pe'cuchet'
PENULTIMATE SONGS
It is through Flaubert's tributes to the dead Bouilhet (n, 759-68) that the reader must approach BeP, for the homage to the poet whose life ca ete trop confondue avec la mienne' is Flaubert's profession of faith in the shared vocation which was also a shared life 'Toute oeuvre d'art enferme une chose particuliere tenant a la personne de l'artiste et qui fait, independamment de l'execution, que nous sommes seduits ou irrites.' There follows a criticism of Criticism that overlooks Tintention de l'auteur' in favour of 'le contraire de ce qu'il a voulu' and praise for Bouilhet's having Torgueil de ne montrer que sa modestie'. Reading the preface to Bouilhet's Dernieres chansons as a literary text is an act of discovery that reveals the pride of Gustave's own modesty. Once again, it is the anomalous dates which point to Gustave's attitudes, unconscious or otherwise: there are two 'time lies' in Flaubert's preface. The first concerns the death of Dr Flaubert (n, 761) and the second involves the date affixed to the preface: 20 juin i8yo. Both concern a life which is 'noble et laborieuse', but that life belongs to Achille Cleophas and to Gustave as much as to the fo^Bouilhet: 'Ce fut dans ce temps-la, vers la fin de 1845, a mort de mon pere, que Bouilhet quitta definitivement la medecine'. Dr Flaubert fell ill on 10 November 1843 (D47, 25) and died on 15 January 1846.
For Gustave the end of labour is the end of life, and his own labour on the preface was prolonged beyond the 20 June 1870 he quotes as a completion date. Gustave re-read the May/June 187
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1870 version in November 1871, and found it severely lacking. The extant version is a complete rewrite. Evidently the retention of the date of the original and imperfect version is a sentimental act, comic and serious at the same time, since it coincides with the anniversary of the beginning of brother Achille's honeymoon — and with that of the separate honeymoon journeys of Bouvard and Pecuchet on 20 June 1841. But it also has a functional dimension, in that it confines Flaubert's criticisms of contemporary philistinism to the period of the Second Empire, beginning with the 1851 coup (defined as 'funeste pour les vers') and ending with the (literary) 'produits scrofuleux d'une nation epuisee'. Flaubert and Bouilhet were fellow sufferers from 'cette torture de la vocation contrariee'. It was Dr Flaubert's death that ended that torture for Gustave once and for all, since a father who was a medical expert constituted a continuing threat for one whose 'maladie nerveuse' was simply a manifestation of that opposed vocation. Bouilhet's patrimony was the meagre leavings of an ex-ambulance chief who took part in the invasion of Russia and died as a result of his suffering during the crossing of the Beresina. A maternal grandfather who wasted his legacy on the collecting of shells accounts for the appearance of this motif in Gustave's fictions, for a society based on patronage and inheritance makes every act of prodigality in previous generations a curse for the present generation. Because of the shared vocation of Gustave and Louis, the vindication of a friend becomes a self-vindication. Many other motifs from the preface appear in BeP: the 'bonnet rouge' and sympathy for Abd-el-Kader which exemplify the Romantic legacy bequeathed to Bouilhet's generation, the 'virulence republicaine' and experience of dissecting (11, 760), the association of the disinherited artistic life with syphilis, censorship under the Second Empire and the artist's need for 'le loisir et la fortune'. The primacy accorded to friendship in Flaubert's last novel is also explained in terms of the literary vocation, through 'cette regie qui veut que les poetes trouvent dans leur famille les plus amers decouragements'. What will surprise some is Flaubert's concern for posterity:
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'Pour faire des oeuvres durables, il ne faut pas rire de la gloire.' Much of the preface is taken up with the question as to which writers will become immortal, with the nation's need for its great gens de lettres as conveyors of that sense of the ultramundane that they inject into life and that is in danger of being lost, just as the love of literature for itself is perceived as being close to extinction, or extinct. Flaubert's contempt for the Second Empire does not stem from its ignorance of great literature but from its astute perception of the subversive role of style. He might just as well be describing his own progression from the contemporary bourgeois realism of Madame Bovary to the oriental exoticism of Salammbo when he claims that, following the coup-d'e'tat, Bouilhet 'se refugia vers les mondes disparus et dans 1'[Extreme-] Orient' (my brackets). The letter to the municipality of Rouen of iy January 1872 is far more virulent in its condemnation of contemporary philistinism and shortsightedness, and again, Flaubert associates the very survival of France with respect for its great works of literature and for those who have made them. He reminds the councillors who have recently rejected the proposed statue of Bouilhet that the Prussians who have just humiliated France were dismissed as dreamy idealists, cque le reveur Fichte a reorganise l'armee prussienne apres Iena, et que le poete Koerner a pousse contre nous quelques uhlans vers 1813'. Finally, there is a plea for immediate and affirmative action: 'Hatez-vous! ou bien la France s'abimera de plus en plus entre une demagogie hideuse et une bourgeoisie stupide'. Combining exhortation with charges of historical ignorance is an extremely inefficient method of persuasion, and Flaubert's charge that the National Assembly, those 'big-time' counterparts of the municipal councillors, would find themselves hard put to come up with the dates of even six kings of France is verging on the self-destructive. It sounds silly, especially in the context of a letter of solicitation. The point is not, of course, a ridiculous one, for there can be no sense of the value of an achievement without an accurate awareness of historical context; but the virulence of Flaubert's style shows
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the defensiveness of one who is arguing a lost, and unwinnable, cause. Posterity has made its judgement of Bouilhet, and that rejection tends to make Flaubert's impassioned defence of art in general ring a little hollow, except insofar as the subject of the discourse is Flaubert himself. What is missing from the homages to Bouilhet is the self-deprecating humour and the wry subtlety of the fictional genre, though the persistence with the 20 June i8yo date indicates novelistic technique, for this was the moment at which Jules de Goncourt died of syphilis. In applying this date to his own defence of his friend, Flaubert acknowledges a shared vocation which was more than brotherhood. Louis is Gustave's alter ego as well as his collaborator; Louis and Gustave are Edmond and Jules. BeP is a success precisely because of its warts-and-all depiction of its subject: whether the 'sacred cow' is friendship or Bonapartism, the enriched subtleties of communication afforded by style make the treatment of the subject a source of delight and 'intrigue'. To tell the 'whole' truth, one must write fiction.
THE HUNDRED DAYS OF BOUVARD ET PECUCHET
As Gothot-Mersch (p. 45) has indicated, the problem with Bouvard's inheritance and the departure for Chavignolles is that 20 January i8jg was a Sunday and 20 March 1841 was not. On Sunday 20 January i8jg, Bouvard receives the news of his father's death at the office. The problem is that the novel has established Sunday as the clerks' day off and the time of their joint activities, so the indications that Bouvard pere died on 10 January i8jg, that Tardivel wrote his letter on 14 January i8jg and that Bouvard received the letter on 20 January i8jg are impossible. The December/January equivalence established in ESi continues throughout Flaubert's work, as is illustrated in Un Coeur simple where the 'lundi, i4Juillet 1819' (11, 171) which never existed thereby coincided with the Monday 14 June i8ig which did, so that December and January six months later became equivalents. Bouvard receives Tardivel's first letter on 20
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December 1838/20 January 1839, but the problem with the postage stamps closes a gap often years as well. Bouvard checks the postage stamp on Tardivel's letter to assure himself of its authenticity (11, 205). This reference to the introduction of postage stamps to France on / January 1849 makes the date 20 December 1848/20 January 184.9
as
we
^:
Bouvard pere dies on the date of Louis Napoleon's election as president of the Republic and his nephew/godson/natural son receives the news on 20 December 1848, date of Louis Napoleon's swearing-in as president on the date of the announcement of the election results (A83, 240). Letters to and from Tardivel take six days to arrive (from 14 to 20 January 1839 in the instance quoted), so the news of Bouvard's inheritance reaches him twelve/sixteen days after he writes to Tardivel, in view of the fourday gap between Bouvard pereh death and the date on Tardivel's first letter. Hence, Bouvard receives the news of his inheritance on 1/5 January/February 1839/1849, at which point he falls into a kind of stupor (n, 205). If Tardivel's third letter, announcing Alexandre's opposition, arrives a few weeks later, then it coincides with his first letter of 20 January 1839^ which, as we know, coincides with 20 December 1838; so the point, six months later, at which Alexandre calms down is 20 June/July 1839, and this is the point at which Bouvard takes possession of his inheritance. From here, it is two years until Pecuchet's retirement, which coincides with his departure for Chavignolles on what must, by virtue of the fact that it is the only Sunday 20 in 1841, be 20 June 1841. This accords perfectly with the statement that, at the end of 1840, Pecuchet's retirement was still six months away (n, 206). The names of the Bouvard Brothers, Frangois, Etienne and Alexandre, refer to France, to a kingdom represented by the 'crown' contained in the name Etienne and to Russia, through the name of the two of its czars whose reigns coincided with French imperial regimes. Also, the names Bouvard and Pecuchet refer to Napoleon's habit, throughout his life, of signing documents with the initials 'BP for 'Buona Parte' (Kemble, 8). The age of our two heroes at the beginning is forty-seven, and this was the age of retirement from the army in Ancient Rome
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according to Montaigne (Morris, 47), so our protagonists are a pair of superannuated soldiers. Scant mention is made of the woman Bouvard pere married at the age of forty and who gave birth to Etienne and Alexandre before dying, but there is a cook who functions as wife to Bouvard's father. The marginalisation of the role of wife and mother in BeP is another of Flaubert's references to the cavalier treatment of women under authoritarian regimes. Bouvard's father's cook alerts the reader to the importance of female servants in the novel, and the names of the ones at Chavignolles, Reine, Marianne, Germaine and Melie, have a political significance which is reinforced by the coincidence of Marie Walewska's death on 10 December 1817, twenty-one years before that of Bouvard pere, the illegitimate progenitor (Aretz, 224). Imperial bastards abounded in the second imperial regime! So far, Flaubert's cunning chronology has produced some subtle temporal jokes based on the coincidence 10/20 December in the French calendar of 1582, so that Louis Napoleon's election and swearing-in as president on 10 and 20 December 184.8 respectively constitute an inheritance from his uncle/godfother/pe're naturel, Napoleon Bonaparte, rather than an office he has merited. Since 10 December was the date of the election of the Roman consuls, and since Roman Emperors formed the habit of dating and numbering their years of office from that point (as though imperial power were renewed annually, as consular power was: Bickerman, 64-5), the satire at Louis Napoleon's expense is extended. Another coincidence adds interest to the game. On 10 January i8jg, Lamartine asked his famous question: 'Is France a nation that is bored?' (Fortescue, 90), so it appears that the heroic progenitor died of boredom. There can be no question as to Flaubert's control of the subtle patterns of temporal allusion in his novel of retraite, for the date of Louis Napoleon's election 'au 10 decembre' is one of the few that is inscribed in the text (11, 254), and Pecuchet's complaint about the number of frauds in the presidential election is a criticism of his literary Maker as well as of the imperial man-god. As such, it resembles Homais's reflections on
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the ruban rouge of the Legion d'Honneur, when this character from within MB moves mentally from TEmpereur Napoleon qui Fa creee' to his self-definition as nothing more than 'un personnage de roman5 that some 'petit paltaquot' has created (JVy, 129). As Homais stands in front of the mirror pondering the question of Napoleonic/Flaubertian creation, authorial selfmockery reaches a peak too obvious for inclusion in the definitive version of MB. By far the greatest temporal construction of Flaubertian style is the by now familiar superimposition of the vernal equinox on the summer solstice in such a way as to make the journey to Chavignolles of 20-g March/June 1841/2 a condensed version of the Glorious 'Cent Jours' of 20 March-2g June 1815, a period mentioned during the time the clerks spend on historical research (n, 241). Since 'le dimanche 20 mars' (11, 207) fits neither the year nor the time of year implied by the novel's chronology, it is necessary, on the model of the chronologically impossible Monday 14 July i8ig in Un Coeur simple, to substitute the Sunday 20 June 1841 which did exist and to superimpose it on the quoted 20 March. Flaubert's invention of the name Chavignolles for the stupid plateau between Caen and Falaise is a masterstroke: by combining Chavignon and Chaville, the two names which substitute for it in the dictionary of toponyms (D&R, 183), he makes a conflation of death/'the unconscious and the cat of his birthplace in the Rue Lecat (Starkie, 12). A temporal setting which approaches the summer solstice indicates why Pecuchet is ascending towards a hollow/depression (11, 207). The ^^-as-synecdoche in the house at Chavignolles is the locus of the nation's, and the writer's, unconscious: it is the place of Pecuchet's impregnation with an exotic African venereal disease on / April 1852 under the pretext of counting bottles (n, 261), but it is also transportable, as is indicated when Bouvard's porte-liqueurs becomes a cave a liqueurs at the beginning of the journey from Paris to Chavignolles (n, 203, 207). The doubling of time in connection with the date of the journey makes Pecuchet's departure from Paris on 20 March/ June occur also on 20 April AMD May - the months between
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March and June — as well as on the 20 July which coincided with 20 June at the time Bouvard took possession of his inheritance. As 20 March, that departure date was the birthday of the King of Rome in 1811, as well as being the beginning of the Hundred Days with Napoleon's arrival at the Tuileries and Louis XVIII's departure for Belgium in 1815. The night of that day was the time of the execution of the Due d'Enghien in 1804 and of Fualdes's assassination in a brothel in 1817 (11, 204). On 20 March 1871, the defeated, deposed and exiled Napoleon III arrived in Dover (WHCS, 259) on the seventy-fifth anniversary of his uncle's opening of the Italian campaign destined to show the world the new Caesar (Bernhardy, 37). 20 March is given further dimensions in Flaubert's text through a deliberate error about an error. When Pecuchet complains that 'Le mariage du Dauphin Francois eut lieu le 14 octobre 1548, et non le 20 mars 1549' by reference to a comparison between Dumas's Les Deux Diane and the Biographie universelle, Flaubert's notes show that he was perfectly aware that Dumas's incorrect date was 20 May 7557 and the historical date 24 April 1558 (G-M, 45). Aside from establishing the equivalence of 20 March/May 124 April/14 October, this 'double error' makes
the distinction between premature and tardy hinted at in the name Tardivel problematic, and hints at another possible source of temporal discrepancies in a plot which abounds in anomalies of precisely that kind. The coincidence 24 April/20 March makes the ten days of the journey equal to Louis XVIII's journey from Calais to Paris from 24 April to 3 May 1814, so the Bourbon king shares Napoleon's Cent Jours. Associating a marriage with the date of Pecuchet's departure contributes further ironic overtones to a 'honeymoon' which began with the participants going their separate ways. On the second anniversary of the beginning of Gustave's brother Achille's honeymoon in Italy from 20 June to 23 October i8jg (Naaman, 20), Bouvard remains in the capital for a last celebration with his old friend Barberou, and this parting of the ways from the beginning of the enterprise is a fictional rendition of Gustave's act of homage to his dead friend Bouilhet in writing 20 juin i8jo on the preface which was completed much
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later (11, 765). The honeymoon journey of Louis (Bouilhet) and Auguste Gustave is also that of Louis (Bonaparte) and Auguste (de Morny), though which is Auguste and which Augustule is a riddle based on the dynamics of the duo. 20 June is also a historically rich date: it combines the Tennis Court Oath of 1789, the Flight to Varennes in 1791 and the Invasion of the Tuileries in 1792 with the conception date of the King of Rome whose death, on 22 July 1832, was commemorated by the smashing of the Flaubert family heirlooms on the third day of the honeymoon journey. Since Sunday 20 March 1842 did exist, the nine-month coincidence/discrepancy in 1841/2 is the period between 'Napoleon IPs' conception and birth. 20 June 1837 saw the accession of Queen Victoria, whose husband Albert was styled Prince Consort on 20 June 1857 (AF, 193, 57), and the Widow Across the Way will be an important figure in BeP. Jules de Goncourt's death on 20 June i8yo (ibid., 193), adds further poignancy to the motif of the couple separated by death, especially since Edmond and Jules de Goncourt are among the models for Bouvard and Pecuchet during the document-collecting historical phase (11, 234—5). Faverges's interest in the scraps of documents taken from his chateau in the context of his frequent unexplained absences at crucial political moments suggests that Bouvard and Pecuchet had stumbled unawares on some compromising information, especially in view of the Academician Larsoneur's continued interest (11, 275). As the Widow Across the Way, Mme Bordin runs a very neat little farm but casts envious eyes on Bouvard's. Despite her friendship for Napoleon III, Victoria did nothing to prevent his downfall, and Flaubert endows the Widow of Windsor with a servant named Marianne precisely because Victoria, like Mme Bordin (11, 217, 251), loathed the very idea of a Republic (Gooch, 75). The association of France's survival with the health or otherwise of its great art is a subject Flaubert broached directly in the homages to Bouilhet. Here, it gains support from another temporal coincidence: on 20 June 1864, Madame Bovary, Les
Miserables and other examples of the finest French literature were placed on the Vatican Index (VH, xn, 1689). The lingua
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franca itself is in danger of being usurped by the language of the neighbour. 20 April as a starting date gives some indication of the reason for that parlous state of affairs. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the day his uncle closed the Bayonne Trap around Ferdinand of Spain, 20 April 1808 (Guedalla, 31). 20 April is one of the dates Clement of Alexandria proposed for the Nativity and the Passion of Christ (JJB, 22), so its coincidence with the birth of the Napoleonic Legend in the Cour des Adieux at Fontainebleau on 20 April 1814 (Delderfield, 278) indicates that the Imperial Legacy meant another generation of stifling censorship and legal persecution for France's writers. 20 May was the date when Castor and Pollux changed place in the Heavens, making one half of the gift greater than the whole (Fasti, 315); and the Ancients' habit of referring to the Twins as the Castors, or simply as Castor, shows the inevitable workings of the dynamics of the duo, wherein one of the pair usually becomes dominant and the other a mere shadow. Balzac was born on 20 May IJOO and returned to Paris with his wife Eveline Hanska on 20 May 1850, less than three months before his death (AF, 161). It was Balzac who defined his political efforts on behalf of writers as a battle fought for and with the Marshals of French Literature (Maurois, 396—7), so Pecuchet's temper tantrum at his office in Paris on the eve of his departure is a reminder of the hero's ungovernable rage on ig May, date of the Marshalate and the Legion d'Honneur (AF, 160). Flaubert's pessimism on the subject of marriage extends to Balzac and Eveline. 20 July, besides combining the date of Bouvard's inheritance with that of Pecuchet's departure, is the birthday of Alexander the Great and of the traitor Marmont as well as the occasion on which Cavour and Napoleon III met for two famous days of plotting against Austria at Plombieres in 1858 (Williams7i, 96). In 1789, it was the beginning of the collective panic known as the Grande Peur (Soboul, 11, 446). 14 October was the date in 1066 when Norman History became English History (AF, 315), as is indicated by the reference to Hastings at the time of 'la conquete' (11, 234), and
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16 October, date of Bouvard's embarkation on the wrong coach, was that of Marie-Antoinette's execution in 1793 (ibid., 317). Marie-Antoinette's choice of the 'wrong coach' for the Flight to Varennes is indicated by the reference to that event during the period of historical research (n, 239), and Faverges criticises Victor Hugo, quite unfairly, for a lack of pity for MarieAntoinette (11, 249). 23 October, time of the surveying of the estate after the arrival in Chavignolles, is the opening date of MB on the anniversary of the Creation of the World. 14 October 1808 was also the date of the departure from Erfurt, whence Napoleon had derived no marriage with Alexander's sister and no confirmation of the alliance with Russia, thanks to Talleyrand (Orieux, 360); so the night of 13-14 October 1841, when Pecuchet takes his leave of Dumouchel and scratches his name in the plaster of his fireplace, is also the night in 241 BG when Narr'Havas wounds Matho for threatening to disrupt the Numidian prince's own plans for a marital alliance with the Barca dynasty. Having multiplied time to a factor of six through the fact that 20 March!April/May/June/July are equal to 24 April and 14 October, Flaubert does not rest on his laurels. The smashing of the Flaubert family heirlooms (G-G, 222-3), t n e 'service de cafe qui ne sert jamais' (NV, 21), on Tuesday 22, date of Caroline-Josephine's death on 22 March 1846 near Gauburge, adds extra temporal dimensions to the model. Gauburge is a form of Walburga/Walpurgis (Delaney, 580), a Valkyr name (AL, 446; CY, 317, 425) shared by a Christian abbess who has two feast days, 25 February and / May. The latter derives from miracles of healing recorded when her relics were moved, but since Walpurgisnacht existed long before the saint's translation, her subsequent association with witchcraft and / May indicates a syncretism (Attwater, 339). Gauburge adds 23 February, the Terminalia, and 29 April to Pecuchet's departure dates, and makes the 'journee ... perdue' on Wednesday 23 coincide with 26 February and 2 May. Gauburge's temporal presence in the text is indicated by the anagram in Pecuchet's observation 'que nous aurons bientot du grabuge' two lines before the narrator
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quotes the date '25 fevrier 1848' (n, 249). The 1—5 May IDecember parallel of ES\\ makes Pecuchet's lost day occur ten years to the day before the coup d'etat of 2 December
I8JI.
Illegitimacy is further conveyed through Gauburge's dates. On the eleventh anniversary of the night of Gautier's 'valeureuse bande SHemani" (11, 764) cited in connection with Romanticism's legacy to Bouilhet's generation, the cachemire argument of 25 February 184J m E$u (n> 68) is reactivated as Pecuchet curses the two imbeciles and Bouvard makes a drunken departure from Paris on the wrong coach after a bibulous leavetaking from Barberou (11, 207). His awakening in front of Rouen cathedral the following morning is followed by a visit to the Theatre des Arts on the evening the coach to Caen is full, so the loci of Emma Bovary's seduction by a miniature (Napo-)Leon are associated with Bouvard's lie that he has recently retired from commerce and bought an estate in the neighbourhood. Bouvard's denial of an inheritance from an uncle/godfather/natural father in favour of a pose as a selfmade man is a double denial of paternity, since his later revelation of a relationship with a 'petite blanchisseuse' whom he didn't marry because she was 'enceinte d'un autre' (11, 221) indicates a further coincidence with the life of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. On 25 February 1843, the laundress of the Ham prison, Alexandrine-Eleonore Vergeot, gave birth to the prince's illegitimate son, Alexandre-Louis-Eugene (Williams, 71, 50), on the ninth anniversary of Eugene de Bauharnais's funeral in his domain of Eichstatt, site of the famous convent of Walburge (Bernhardy, 579, 525). Since Eugene was Napoleon's adopted son and Louis Napoleon's maternal uncle, the lie that Bouvard is 'veuf . . . et sans enfants!' (11, 202) casts doubt on his paternal veracity, for Bouvard's wife, who ran off with the cashbox after six months of marriage (11, 204), has made him merely a grass widower. Bouvard's lie on the anniversary of the Escape from Elba and Victor Hugo's birth explains Pecuchet's characterisation of the news of 20 December 1838/1848 as 'une farce!': when Louis Napoleon swore, as its president, to uphold and defend the Republic and its Constitution on that date, he was aware that
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his election by universal suffrage on 10 December 184.8 was really an illegitimate inheritance. Bouvard's further lie concerning his uncle/godfather is revealed later: he was always aware that Fran^ois-Denys-Bartholomee Bovary was his pere naturel (11, 205). Since the smashed porcelain of 25 February/22 June coincides with Napoleon's final abdication in 1815, Bouvard's lie at the Theatre des Arts coincides with the proclamation of Napoleon II as Emperor on 23 June 1815, anniversary of the false birthdate which enabled Napoleon to divorce Josephine (Aretz, 91). Hence, Pecuchet's association of the idea of universal suffrage with cdu grabuge' (11, 249) is an anagram which anticipates the repetition of the 25-6 February of Bouvard's 1841 act of deception in the events of 25-6 February 1848 (11, 249-50), when Louis Napoleon returned to France. Bouvard's lies have further implications for the chronological system of BeP. Since both Pecuchet and the narrator were given to understand that Bouvard would leave Paris on the same date as Pecuchet, his postponement of that departure by two days indicates a coincidence of 20/22 March/June and their equivalents which will enable Flaubert to tell further stories through temporal coincidence. And since the 2412g April coincidence for the first day of the journey creates an equivalence of Day 1 and Day 6, there is doubling-back at more than one interval within a progression. The chronology of BeP is a kaleidoscopic jigsaw puzzle, a mobile stained-glass window which enables all sorts of pictures and narratives to be shaken into place. The death of Caroline-Josephine Flaubert on 22 March 1846 is just one of many miniature narratives which haunt the chronological system of Flaubert's novel ofretraite. The temporal discrepancies/coincidences so far unearthed are not the only ones. The carnets de travail show that Flaubert was interested in all sorts of calendrical phenomena, from contradictory gestation periods acknowledged by the Ancients to the birth of Christ 'cinq ans, ou meme huit ans plus tot qu'on le met ordinairement' (de Biasi, 137, 613, 919): 'Les indictions sont une revolution de quinze annees que Ton recommence toujours par l'unite lorsque le nombre de quinze est finie. L'origine de cette periode remonte a Constantin' (ibid., 919).
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Flaubert was further aware that there were three ways of counting Olympiads and that there are authors 'qui confondent Pannee olympique avec Pannee civile des Grecs' (ibid., 919). Many other phenomena from UArt de verifier les dates are cited in the cahiers, including the structure which dictates the length of Flaubert's great contemporary novels, Madame Bovary, UEducation sentimentale (1869) and Bouvard et Pecuchet: cLe cycle solaire est une revolution de 28 annees' (ibid., 920). Particular emphasis is placed on the arbitrariness of beginning points, whether they be the moment at which Italy or France began to number years from Christ's birth, the idea of New Year's Day or the beginning dates of the various indictions (ibid., 918—20). Since Bouvard and Pecuchet are associated with the age of forty-seven (11, 203) on the novel's opening date, and since that date is Sunday 13 August 1837/15 September 1838 by virtue of the coincidence of Saturday 12 August 1843/14 September 1844 at the time of the picnic in £$11 (11, 40), it follows that one of their possible dates of birth coincides with the Revolutionary calendar which dated from 22 September iyg2, though it did not come into use until 26 November iyg3, after the abolition of the Christian era in France on 24 November ijg3 (AF, 400-1). The narrator's statement that each thought the other much older than forty-seven (11, 203) is a reflection of the fact that the French Revolutionary calendar is a repetition of the Egyptian solar calendar standardised by Augustus in 30/26 BG and beginning on 2g August, with the five epagomenal days (corresponding to the Sans-Culottides of iy-21 September) beginning with Osiris' birthday on 24 August (Richmond, 60). The choice of opening date for BeP has aesthetic dimensions which indicate that the timing of the novel's events must be calculated using thematic/aesthetic patterns as well as the enchainment of temporal continuity. A 13 August/15 September coincidence brings together the allusion to the Zorai'de Turc fiasco of 13 August 1837 on the last day of ESn with the 15 September 1840 of that novel's first day. The Two Friends motif of 15-16 September 1840 at the Cygne de la Croix is echoed by the coup defoudre of 15 September 1838 and the flannel devoilement of 16 September 1838. Salammbo is not omitted from this pattern of
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arbitrary beginnings: Flaubert's substitution of Eloul for Tammouz/Tibby in connection with the theft of the £aimpk and the superimposition of Nyssan on Tammouz at the time of the tent alliance make the 13/25 October/April of the novel's opening coincide with the 13 April/June/August beginning of the Mercenary War. Hence, the marriage/murder of Salammbo ending coincides also with its beginning, and with the 13 August 1837 of the opening of BeP. As the Zorai'de Turc episode also indicates, that 13 August is also equal to 16 July 1837. Using the 20 March/June model for the Chavignolles journey produces an interesting miniature narrative. On Sunday 20, Pecuchet scratches his name on the plaster fireplace and leaves Paris. Monday 21 is the day of ascent and Tuesday 22 that of the broken axle and smashed heirlooms near Gauburge, of Pecuchet's cursing of the two imbeciles and cup of bitterness full to overflowing. It is also the evening of Bouvard's inebriated departure from Paris on the wrong coach which arrives before Rouen cathedral on Wednesday 23, defined as Pecuchet's 'journee ... perdue' (11, 207). That evening, the coach for Caen is full, so Bouvard goes to the Theatre des Arts in Rouen and lies by implying that he is a self-made man rather than an illegitimate heir. On Friday 25, he arrives in Caen to find that the packages sent by river transport are not there, and on Sunday 27, he sends them off by cart, saying that he will follow in a few hours. On the evening of Monday 28, the lost Pecuchet is rescued from the mire of the ploughed fields beyond Bretteville by the fortuitous timing of his friend's arrival, and the Chavignolles house is reached that same evening. Tuesday 2g begins just after midnight with a stroll around the garden and the crowing of a cock to announce la saint-Pierre. Oddly enough, the pitch-black darkness which has characterised this MondayTuesday night is succeeded by flooding moonlight as soon as the deux cloportes are asleep. Unconsciousness and illumination are interrelated in the place where Poe's cave contains a black cat and liqueurs, as Bachelard has indicated: the cave is the unconscious where the cursed cat, sign of 'fautes inexpiees', buried madness and 'drames mures', cries insistently (GB, 36-7)-
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There is only one day in this ten-day time run about which nothing whatever is said: Saturday 26, the seventh day, equivalent to 26 March-July/1 March/5 May/20
October/30 April. As
26 April/June it is the day in 1848 when Cavaignac's forces massacred Parisian workers after the armistice and the beginning of the bloody disturbances in Rouen. The importance of the latter for Flaubert is indicated by the fact that the FrancoisMarie reference makes 26 April occur twice in the journey to Chavignolles. As 26 October/April 241 BC, it is the night when the guilty Baleares slaughter the Barca dynasty's sacred fish in Salammbo: the founding crime on which the inexpiable war is based. As 30 April, the pagan Walpurgisnacht, it is a time of great evil (AF, 139), as is indicated by its coincidence with the 5 May on which Napoleon, Napoleon-Charles and Godefroy Cavaignac died and the Empress Eugenie was born! On 26 March, Emma Bovary's funeral in 1846 coincides with the formal establishment of the Commune in 1871 on the anniversary of Beethoven's death (AF, 103). However, 26 May is the most interesting date of all. In a letter to Alfred Le Poittevin on 26 May 1845, Flaubert claims that it is now two years since he had coitus; in a few days, it will be a year since he performed any lascivious act. Since nothing at all is said about Pecuchet from Wednesday 23 until Monday 28, and since Bouvard's activities on Sunday-Monday 20-1 and from Thursday 24 to the evening of Monday 28 are narrated with a mysterious reticence, the subject of suppression/repression is indicated. Gustave's sexual boasting/reticence in the letter to Alfred has further implications: it establishes him as sexually active until 26 May 1843 and draws attention to the fact that once again the moment of Adolphe Schlesinger's conception is avoided, even though we have come to within two days of it with the surveying of the estate on 29 March 1841/2. Flaubert has dangled the carrot then whisked it away. By using the Hundred Days as a temporal model, Flaubert has made Pecuchet's lonely embarkation coincide with a reign which began on the birthday of a son who was lost forever, and the crowing cock of 29 March/June 184111815 on the last of the Hundred Days will find its equivalent in the statue of St Peter,
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whose tears for the denial of the Son are misinterpreted as the roseolae of alcoholism by the uncomprehending (11, 273). St Peter's Day, 2g June 1822, was the date of Jules-Alfred Flaubert's death; la saint-Denis of 3/9 October 1817 (Delaney, 640) saw that of the original Caroline Flaubert (Naaman, 17). The 3 octobre 1817 which appears on the 'butterdish' base of St Peter's statue, and which Bouvard thinks may be of use to the Comte de Faverges, commemorates the loss of Gustave's siblings and the Bourbons' inability to unite France as a family, since the cahiers show that the Due d'Angouleme had no time for the distress of his uncle's subjects on that occasion: 'Le due d'Angouleme traverse le canton le 3 octobre 1817, sans presque s'arreter «lorsqu'on s'attendait a l'entendre nous consoler de nos pertes et nous promettre un plus heureux avenir. La revolution commenga des lors a germiner dans toutes les tetes!»' (de Biasi, 830). While this is a ridiculous statement in view of the thirteen-year interval between resentment and revolution, it does point to the inability of the Bourbons to gauge the nation's mood, and this subject will arise at Faverges's luncheon party of ij October 1848/1830, another version of Pecuchet's lost day of 23 March/June/IJ
October 1841/2.
Bouvard's lies all concern sexuality and vanity, whether they concern the age of forty-seven, his status as a childless widower, the relationship of illegitimacy binding him to his 'uncle' or his pose as a recently retired businessman. All Bouvard's opportunities, financial and sexual, have come to him from his illegitimate father, and he has wasted them all. The wife of six months who absconded with the cashbox and the laundress who is mentioned just before Pecuchet is endowed with the long torso and short legs (11, 221) which are the hereditary stamp of the Bonapartes (DD, 8) are proofs of an amorous and financial bumblefootedness which will dictate the plot of BeP - and of Second-Empire France. Descharmes's study of the chronology of BeP (pp. 68ff.) indicates just how full of contradictions it is, and Pecuchet's calendar of fishbone peachtrees containing 'vides' and 'pleins' 'toujours ou il n'en fallait pas' (11, 214) provides a clue to the
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system. Just as the narration of the events of 4 June 1848 (11, 252) and ig July 1848 (11, 253) is followed, through the use of the pluperfect tense, by the narration of the events of 6 June 1848 (n, 259), so other events from the past/future are narrated at moments which make them appear to be contemporaneous. An example is the narration of Bouvard's seduction of the hysterical La Barbee in the middle of the resumption of the illegal practice of medicine (n, 264-5). Chapter vm itself begins with an apparent temporal contradiction through the use as a horizontal bar of the 'tilleul abattu' (11, 262) which had been chopped up and carted away in chapter 111 (n, 222). Although chapter vm opens in the summer of 1852, after the disillusionment with love experienced on 1-8 April 1852, and proceeds via the autumn of 1852 (11, 262) to the beginning of the vogue for tableturning which occurred in France in 1853, the dead linden, as if in anticipation of dendrochronology, warns us to be careful with regard to assigning dates to events. The use of the pluperfect tense in relation to Bouvard's reputation for curing La Barbee ('il eut gueri la Barbee') is the clue which points to the missing period in the journey to Chavignolles. Because of the context, the reader would expect the setting to be Chavignolles and the 'servante' referred to to be Germaine, but we might just as well be situated in Caen in Bouvard's hotel room in the period between 26 and 28 March/June 1841/2: 'Quand il eut congedie la servante et pousse les verrous, il se mit a frictionner son abdomen en appuyant sur la place des ovaires' (n, 265). The worm which La Barbee can feel in her insides may just be less imaginary than it seems, and Bouvard's three seances which cure La Barbee's sexual frustration may account for the period of time Bouvard spends between his arrival at Caen and his appearance beyond Falaise and Bretteville at the time he rescues Pecuchet. Certainly, the similarities between the Barbee episode and the account of the 'curing' of La Guerine in MB (1, 611) are striking: immediately after Felicite's account of La Guerine, we move to / April 1842 and Bournisien's account of 'une vache qui avait Venfle9 that very morning (1, 612). In BeP, there is a gap of four days between the three sessions with La Barbee on 26-8 March 1842 and the / April 1853/4 of the swollen
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cow. The daughter of a sea captain who is away for long periods has the liberty to become a prostitute, as is indicated by Flaubert's visit to the brothel of La Guerine before the departure for the Eastern Journey in 1849 (n? 552)- Further visits to La Barbee also coincide with Bouvard's surreptitious trips to Falaise before the dinner party in May!June 184^ for the packages he brings back on this occasion associate conquest with Algeria, naked women, negroes, horses' hooves and death's heads (11, 215-16). The dating of the swollen cow cured by Bouvard and Pecuchet to / April 1853/4 *s suggested by the flowering appletrees which coincide with the beginning of April at the time of the two peafowl in rut in 1864 (11, 293). Since the 'paquet de matieres jaunes' which erupts from the cow's body (11, 265) suggests an accouchement as well as an explosion of clover, the narrator has associated seduction with birth, and the communication of what is censored seems to work according to calendrical phenomena. From / March 1841, the day—date correlation is the same for 1841/1852, for 1842/1853 and for 1843/1854, so Flaubert has used this phenomenon to associate an act of sexual intercourse or a sense of hysteria based on a human 'epoque du rut' with a birth. Censorship requires substitutions sanctioned by the calendar. And since / April is a 'trick date' in itself, as an old-time year's beginning and festival of fools, the conception and birth of Adolphe Schlesinger remain part of a comic, mysterious and far-from-respectable indeterminacy. We are situated one year too late for Adolphe's conception, which coincided with Pecuchet's seduction of Melie on Thursday 1 April 1841/1852; and the fact that the three sessions with la Barbee followed the date of Bouvard's attendance at the Caen theatre (mentioned during the dinner of May/June 1847) on 25 March/June 1841/2, the night of his arrival in Caen, suggests that there is something theatrical about the whole episode of La Barbee/Guerine. At the same time, there is something sacred in the fact that the journey beginning on 20 March 1842 coincides with the beginning of Holy Week in that year, just as the account of Emma Bovary's death occurs in that same period according to a fixed definition of Easter. 20 March
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1842 was Palm Sunday (JBB, 140), so 25 March was Good Friday, the most solemn date in the church year. Because the 1842 version of the journey commemorates Stendhal's apoplectic stroke and death on 22-3 March 1842, the text pays tribute to the nation's loss at the death of its writers, in this case one who recorded the hold of the Napoleonic myth on the nation's imagination. Although the swollen cow of / April 1853 is meant to be the animal provided by cle hasard' in answer to the need for an experiment on magnetism, that role has already been filled by the yellow dog which wandered into the fournil in Chapter in (n, 222), a month before the linden was removed. Hence, it follows that different segments of BeP can be fitted together in different ways in order to create further narratives based on thematic and temporal coincidence. The cow which expelled its yellow matter in association with Bouvard's randiness is the opposite of the yellow dog tortured with magnetising pins in association with Pecuchet's repressed sexuality on a date, 16 July/13 August 1843/8, afforded by the similarity between Pecuchet's account of a failed trip to the brothel and the account of the same event at the close ofESn (11, 162—3). Twice in BeP, a date is quite transparently rendered through a literary allusion. The first is Vaucorbeil's diagnosis of Pecuchet's syphilis on / July 1854 and the second the encounter with the dead dog on 16 July 1857. 1 July 1854 is twenty years to the day after Musset's On ne badine pas avec Vamour was published (VH, v, 1458). It is also the festival of St Gall, patron of poultry farmers (AF, 206), so Vaucorbeil's statement, 'ne badinons pas avec Pamour' is followed by a lesson on hypnotising chickens after the further diagnosis of Pecuchet's trances caused by the reflection from the shiny visiere of his casquette (11, 269). Since Pecuchet's syphilides are defined as fructus belli by the vulturecrow, Vaucorbeil, the inference to be drawn is that the vanity of military glory is to blame for Pecuchet's condition as much as the infection of / April 1852/1841. When Bouvard and Pecuchet encounter the dog's carcass, the imagery from 'Une Charogne' in Les Fleurs du mal indicates
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that the coincidence of the seizure on the grounds of obscenity of that volume on 16 July i8jy with Berenger's death of the same day (VH, x, 1565) is the thematic principle by which the date is to be assigned. Since Baudelaire's poem concerns woman as the source of syphilis, and since the editor who was charged and convicted with Baudelaire was named PouletMalassis, the coincidence with the Dumouchel-Poulet marriage announcement of the same day 'Au milieu de l'ete' (11, 275) is further evidence of the identification of Berenger's death with the seizure of Baudelaire's poems made by Flaubert at the time he received the news (Cn, 758—9). That Berenger should be honoured with a state funeral while Baudelaire was suffering a form of persecution which affected Flaubert 'personnellement' was revolting, and the association of Berenger's — and Baudelaire's - deaths with that of a dog recalls Victor Hugo's reaction to the news of Louis Napoleon's death in 1873: 'The dog is dead' (Guedalla, 233). Persecutor/prosecutor and persecuted/ prosecuted become one. Further identification concerns the yellow dog tortured in the name of science on 16 July/13 August 1843/8. The narrator has made it quite clear the Bouvard's sly sexuality, resulting in a prurient interest in medicine as a seduction opportunity (11, 220), is matched by Pecuchet's habit of sexual repression, resulting in a certain tendency to sadism, expressed through the torturing of animals and an interest in inserting thermometers in rectums during an outbreak of typhoid fever (n, 222-3). Flaubert's knowledge, both personal and intellectual, of venereal diseases seems to include an awareness of the tertiary stage of syphilis and its ability to cause fatalities, as in the case of Baudelaire. The association of Pecuchet's illness with jaundice and typhoid indicates Flaubert's conviction that many nineteenthcentury deaths from syphilis were attributed to other causes owing to the presence of fever symptoms. Throughout BeP, Pecuchet's hair is the subject of a private joke: his flat hair which looks like a wig (11, 202, 260) is in fact a toupet, and Bouvard's baldness (11, 235), inherited from a father who wears a toupet (11, 203), may be a sign of congenital syphilis. Char-
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acters who wear hats/caps pulled over their brows are often attempting to hide the alopecia and rashes of venereal infection, and the fact that hiding baldness and being hypnotised by the shiny visiere are both manifestations of mirror-vanity indicates that venereal infection is a result of the narcissism of sexual conquest. But something more is indicated by the dating of these two episodes. The fact that Pecuchet realises that he and Bouvard will resemble the dog's carcass one day points to the coincidence that the meeting on the Boulevard Bourdon occurred on 16 July/13 August 1837 AND 15 September 1838. Moreover,
Pecuchet's account of a failed visit to a brothel on the day of the tortured yellow dog indicates that that episode occurs on 16 July/13 August 1843, five years after the coup de foudre on the
Boulevard Bourdon which repeats the great non-event chez Id Turque at the end of ES11. Since 16 July is one of the dates assigned to the Hegira as the beginning of Islamic time reckoning, the flight of Mohammed adds Flaubert's own syphilis of 24 March 1850 to the pattern through the implied name Mohammed. In Un Coeur simple, Victor leaves for Havana on 16 June/July i8ig, and dies of yellow fever. For Flaubert, the yellow skin of typhomalarial/venereal infections is a sign of the fatality of syphilis, whether that syphilisation is congenital or the result of overindulgence or repression. The cases he and Du Camp saw on 22 December i84g at the Kars el-Aim hospital were all the result of homosexual encounters among the Mamelukes of Abbas Pacha: cSur un signe du medecin, tous se levaient debout ... (c'etait comme une manoeuvre militaire) et s'ouvraient l'anus avec leurs doigts pour montrer leurs chancres' (11, 565). The association of syphilis with military homosexuality was Flaubert's first perception of the disease's manifestations, and his reaction was immediate: 'j'ai recule d'un pas a l'odeur qui s'en degageait'. From the odour of chancres to that of the rotting corpse of a dog is not such a large step. A problem arises with regard to the onset of Pecuchet's first symptoms 'huit jours' after the encounter with Melie in the cave. Since Thursday 1 April 1841/1852 is the time of the conception of
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Adolphe Schlesinger, Flaubert would appear to be attributing his own syphilis to the frustration caused by Elisa's status as a married woman; but seven or eight days is too short an incubation period for a disease whose symptoms never appear before ten days. However, 'huit jours' was the period of incubation acknowledged by Gustave and his friends when they joked about catching a dose, as is shown by Du Camps' letter of 2 October 1844: 'C'est peut-etre la verole dans 8 jours (Comment va la tienne?)' (Ci, 793). Eight days before / April is 24 March, the date of the encounter with 'un petit rais de quatorze ans environ, Mohammed' whose 'couleur jaune' might have been a warning: cil m'a donne des dattes et relevait le bout de ma couverture qui trempait dans l'eau' (n, 580). The encounter is expressed in literary style in the Notes de voyage: 'Dimanche 24 mars, jour des Rameaux' produces 'il ramait', and the body revealed by the action of rowing has a palm tree's grace as the vibrant voice sings in Arabic (11, 580). Later, on / July 1850, the travellers return to the Kars el-Aini hospital which specialises in syphilis cases, but no explanation is given for the return (11, 601). On 28 May, Flaubert notes that he is still 'ereinte' from a fever contracted during the trip to Kosseir of 23 May (11, 598-9), and the time spent from 7 June with Dr Cuny and a pharmacist (11, 599) may indicate the search for treatment. If a venereal infection were diagnosed at the hospital on / July 1850, it would coincide with Dr Vaucorbeil's diagnosis of Pecuchet's syphilis on / July 1854 (11, 269). In MB, April and July were equivalents through their day-date coincidence, so infection and diagnosis coincide through the system which dated from ESi and which made 14 February/ March the equivalent of / April through the lavatio. Whatever the situation with regard to Flaubert's own venereal condition, syphilis is certainly the subject of interest to the writer who is giving a counting and an accounting of his life in the testament which is BeP. That this subject should be handled with humour and elusive subtlety is not as surprising as it first appears, and it should always be remembered that / April, All Fool's Day, is the basis of many of Flaubert's 'confessions' regarding his own sexual experiences, real, imaginary or embel-
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lished. Associating Berenger's death with the putrescent carcass of a dog (n, 275) is a way of expressing the legacy conveyed to Flaubert's generation by the myth of the Napoleonic warrior's glory, for Pecuchet will repeatedly associate the role of conqueror with everything from inventing a new liqueur (11, 218) to being physically attractive to women (11, 260). The official diagnosis of the condition on / July 1854, four years after Flaubert's return to the hospital in Cairo, is also the sixth anniversary of the institution of the Feast of the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ by Pius IX in gratitude for his deliverance by Oudinot - and Louis Napoleon - through the expedition to Rome (AF, 206). The blood of Christ himself is tainted by the syphilis of Bonapartist gloire, and Berenger's exploitation of the Napoleonic myth is one of the causes of the persistence of that myth, to the detriment of other aspects of the reign of the 'Corse aux cheveux plats' perpetuated through Pecuchet's coiffure and body. The pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de la Delivrande involves further temporal contradictions, since the notes give the year as 1857 (G-M, 35), while the reference to the vicissitudes of Barberou's career over the twenty years since his last meeting with Bouvard suggests that the time of the reunion is 22 June 1861. A further manipulation is suggested by the false date given for Anne-Justice-Caroline Flaubert's death, 6 April 1872 after a thirty-three-hour agony. Since the real time was the early hours of 7 April i8y2 (Bart, 563), Flaubert's acknowledgement of the earlier date repeats the doubling of his own birthday and makes his mother's death occur on the anniversary of Desiree-Caroline's marriage to Ernest Commanville on 6 April 1864. The sense of loss is multiplied by such a contrived coincidence, but a later effect is to have the mother's death coincide, at a six-month remove, with the pilgrimage of over 20,000 people to Lourdes on 6 October 1872 (AF, 307). The blue plaster Virgin which Pecuchet claims as his own (to save Bouvard's face with Barberou) is the second appearance of a 'dame en platre' in the novel. The first, which appeared on 2g March/June 1841 at Chavignolles, was a far less reverent
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version of the 'Lady': 'la dame en platre qui pisse sous la charmille' is another association of Bonapartism with urological problems, particularly Josephine's in connection with a cachemire (Kemble, 194), connoting venereal infections on the last of the Hundred Days, just as the blue plaster Lady appears on the anniversary of the abdication of 1815. Because of the coincidence of 14 October and 20 March/June in relation to the Francois-Marie marriage, the 6/16 Octoberwhich coincides with 22 March/June makes the blue plaster Virgin coincide with the pilgrimage to Lourdes and the phenomenon of Bernadette's visions so ardently championed by the Empress Eugenie (Leroy, 228) — and all on a 22 March which repeats the death of Caroline-Josephine Flaubert Hamard. The subject of syphilis in the context of yellow skin and jaundice recalls an important element in the manufacture of the Napoleonic myth: the notion that hepatitis from the insalubrious climate of St Helena was the cause of Napoleon's death, which is tantamount to saying that the British killed their adversary with the proverbial perfidy attributed to them by Napoleon. The 3 October i8iy on St Peter's statue and whose usefulness Bouvard suggests to the Comte de Faverges is also the date of Napoleon's last medical examination, whence emerged the first mention of hepatitis (Kemble, 244). Since St Peter's feast day points to the end of the Hundred Days, and since the saint's statue bears symptoms which are misdiagnosed by the Chavignolles spectators, the illness of the martyr of St Helena is present in BeP, as are the ditches, depressions and hollows contained in the name Chavignolles. For Napoleon, 'leaping the ditch' meant invading England, but there is also the matter of a certain 'very shallow depression' between La Belle Alliance and the Cote Saint-Jean at Waterloo which remains a point of contention between the British and the French (Kemble, 146, 225). Pecuchet's jealousy and subsequent lust are first aroused while he is standing in a depression as silent witness to the parting scene between Gorju and Mme Castillon; his venereal infection is contracted in the cave and diagnosed by a Vaucorbeil who is passing through a sunken lane. Napoleon's
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'epileptiform5 fits are defined as 'really the convulsions resulting from rage' (Kemble, 133), and the fact that Morny's sallow complexion made a liver problem seem the cause of death before the pancreas was discovered to be the cause (RP, 252) indicates that the 'chrome yellow' complexion of the dead Napoleon III (Brodsky, 306) was a family affair. The basis of the scene of Victorine's seduction by Romiche is Lord Cowley's comment on the marriage of the sixteen-yearold Clotilde, 'this child sacrificed', to the forty-six-year-old Plon-Plon on 30 January i8jg: 'It is positively horrible to see that poor little frail creature by the side of that brute (I can call him nothing else) to whom she has been immolated' (Gooch, 105). Napoleon's marriage to Marie-Louise provoked similar comments about the Minotaur's embrace, so the fournil venue of Bouvard's witnessing of the scene primitive (11, 299) is an appropriate setting for the reappearance of the sacrifice to Moloch. Flaubert's notes indicate another temporal contradiction which involves the links with the pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de la Delivrande: in the winter after that visit, the ten-year-old Victorine is introduced to the novel (11, 282), yet the notes place the 'perte' of the fourteen-year-old Victorine in 1868 (G-M, 35-6). The last scene before Victorine's seduction is the trial involving Bouvard and Pecuchet's interference in the matter of Dauphin's poaching, and the mention of plaster busts of France's rulers from Napoloen I to Napoleon III (11, 297) creates a coincidence of the trial of Madame Bovary, beginning on a 2g January defined as 31 January 1857, and the later literary prosecutions of the Second Empire. The Pinard who prosecuted MB was charged with pursuing Rochefort's Lanterne, but Rochefort's escape to Belgium enabled the continuation of the publication of that anti-Bonapartist journal (which questioned the legitimacy of both empires), and Pinard was unable to prevent copies of La Lanterne from being smuggled into France in plaster busts of the Emperor (Guedalla, 303). The revenge for the prosecution of Flaubert's first novel is conveyed through the charges against other defendants for 'manque de lanternes a des carrioles' in the context of plaster busts at the time of the trial for sedition (11, 297).
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Between the trial over Dauphin and the seduction scene, which repeats the dates of the marriages of Louis Napoleon on 29—30 January 1853 and Prince Napoleon on 30 January i8jg and the date of the opening of MB's trial on 29 January 1837, comes the question of why Louis Napoleon hasn't answered the heroes' letter: cDe quoi done s'occupait l'empereur, de femmes sans doute?' (11, 299). BeP's chronological scheme is a practical demonstration of what happens when the before/after distinction becomes obscured in a society which seeks to perpetuate great anniversaries of events whose real implications have been blurred through the passage of time. This tendency to attempt to perpetuate glorious moments through the commemoration of anniversaries at the expense of a perception of temporal continuity is an abiding aspect of the relationship of all creatures with time itself. The feeling that everything happens twice in BeP makes it difficult to distinguish one fiasco from another in the reader's attempt to remember the clerks' various enterprises; and the sense of contagion which attaches ironically to the metaphoric process of anniversaries makes both the original and the subsequent effort seem the same and doomed to inevitable failure. Such is the effect intended by the author: to show that the First Empire's events are contaminated by the fiascos of the Second Empire, and vice versa. BeP is quite demonstrably the novel of revenge its author mooted, and the revenge is an accounting as well as a counting of the bottles in the cellar of the unconscious. Bouvard and Pecuchet postpone their suicide deaths through the necessity of writing a testament, just as Flaubert's retraite novel was interrupted for the writing of Trois Contes.
BeP is an obituary as well as a testament: it is full of near misses with death, and with disasters which betoken a gradual winding down as evidence of the power of the death instinct to speak its piece in human affairs. Its encoding of the contents of the unconscious in an intimately confessional mode indicates the need for a reckoning so that all may be said and done. All of Flaubert's families are present from the moment of the booming of the Boulevard Bourdon to that of the blue coat
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whose destination is the Croix d'Or. Like the alchemists, Flaubert sketches a double trajectory of a vote seche and a vote humide: the 'deux ecluses' which delimit the path traced by the two commis who walk beside the Canal Saint-Martin are the two Schlesingers (ECS, 247), and Pecuchet's domicile in the Rue Saint-Martin, home of the pere Roque who also has the Bonaparte torso and wig, indicates an identification with the liquid element. Bouvard's home in the Rue de Bethune on the He Saint-Louis places him in the river, and he is the one who looks after the portable property betokened by the names Bouvard and Pecuchet (Lebel, 70, 72; Frame, 2859) which is transported by river and which reaches Chavignolles late but intact. The combination of the bovine element in pecuniary affairs and the paternity of the name Bouvard/Pepin indicates the place of friendship and vocation in the novel: the 'gene pecuniaire' to which Pecuchet's virginity is attributed (n, 221) is a reference to the original boeuf, Bouilhet (D&R, 101), as Gustave's alter ego and double, fellow sufferer from 'cette touture de la vocation contrariee' (n, 760). Fatherhood and portable property are what the death instinct is all about: both concern the contents of the unconscious/ conscience and the memories which go to the grave and/or are left behind. Multiplying time through erroneous dates is a way of opening the temporal trajectory out towards infinity: once two logically irreconcilable truths are made to coexist, the path to interpretation is opened up and the text becomes a cloud formation or an inkblot. And that is allowed for in the narration of the opening scene as well, for the canal water delimited by the two locks is inky-black and B(o)uvard is a blotter. An apparently hopelessly self-contradictory chronology creates an area of play through which the reader can construct Gustave's obituary and that of the nation whose decline he is tracing. Bouvard's loss of the estate in all but name is followed by the Gannon's buffoonery, for the last of the Hundred Days, 2 9 3une *8fo> s e e s a combination of one of the nine-hour Norman ripailles which always fascinated Flaubert and the old joke about the Fete de la Vidange at the Hotel des Farces (D47, 92-3). Friendship is what you take with you, and the dead
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Monseigneur, Bouilhet, is there, as well as Cerpet/Crepet and an adopted son who is very good at puns and acrostics and who goes by the name of Pruneau (11, 280). The end of Bonapartism is made to coincide with the great comet seen over England and France on 2g June 1861 (AF, 202), and the comet symbolising a 'brilliant career' as well as national disasters (Hangen, 77) is a fitting presence/absence for the indication of the relationship between Bonapartism and the nation's writers. The nouveau/nova named Charbovari that burned itself up in a moment of splendour consumptive of its essence on the day the earth was created has returned as a comet which illuminates both sides of the 'ditch', and Bouvard feels better about his loss the day after the feast. France's clergy and writers may have had something to celebrate at the demise of Bonapartism, but there is loss as well: this Norman Skirophoria is also the anniversary of Jules-Alfred Flaubert's death in 1822 (Naaman, 171) and of the morning when Louise Roque's heart was broken in 1848 (11, 136). As Gustave passes the mantle of succession to 'Joseph Prunier', he pays homage to a style of rule under which all the generations of nineteenth-century France have lived. While Reine, Marianne and Germaine represent the political options offered by the monarchy, the republic and the martial Bonapartes, Germaine's introduction to the novel on the last of the Hundred Days in 1841 indicates Bonapartism's perennial ability to renew its appeal to the French in the context of repeated dismissals and reconciliations. However, it is Melie who personates the Sacred Soil in BeP, and it is towards the pregnant and syphilitic Melie that Bouvard and Pecuchet are moving in the last, unfinished sentence Flaubert wrote.
CHAPTER 7
Petit dictionnaire de Flaubert
ADOLPHE SGHLESINGER
Adolphe, the 'noble wolf (CY, 409), occupies a marginal position in Flaubert's fictions. Adolphe Duprey was a former name for Leon (jVT7, 5), and Emma shudders at the boatman's mention of 'Adolphe ... Dodolphe ...' (1, 661) in MB. The name Adolphe-Maurice appears in ESi through the presence of Adolphe Lenoir (1, 285), who becomes a soldier, as Eugene Arnoux does in ES11 (11, 160). In BeP, on / April, the 'good' Adolphe who studies his German is juxtaposed with the 'bad' Eugene (11, 294), and the Celtic derivation of Eugene is from Eoghan, 'young soldier', though its usual derivation is from the Greek for 'well born' (ibid., 87). Eugene Arnoux serves in Algeria and in Rome when he is grown up (11, 160, 162), and Gorju brings an African venereal disease from Algeria in BeP. Adolphe Langlois announces Cecile Dambreuse's inheritance from her natural father at the Lupercalia of 15 February 1851, the day of Frederic Baslin's illegitimate birth and the day after M. Dambreuse was buried near the author of Adolphe on la saint-Adolphe (11, 147).
It is mainly through this language of time that Adolphe is presented in Flaubert's fictions. 14—15 February 240 BC is also the time of Hamilcar's return to Carthage and welcome by Salammbo, and Flaubert wrote 'lares' in the plans to symbolise Hamilcar's return (Green, 39). The Hamilcar—Hannibal relationship in Salammbo is linked most specifically with the 14—15 February of Hamilcar's return and with the / April when Hamilcar saves his son's life through the substitution of another 216
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child. Hamilcar's love for Hannibal is never in doubt, even though he allows his son to be raised by Iddibal, and Hamilcar instructs this 'robuste vieillard' on 14 February 240 BC: 'N'oublie rien! Aime-le!' (1, 730). The Fox who returns to haunt Jules on 5 October 1846 in ESi is a clouve' as well as a dog/fox/ermine, and symbolises a fatherson relationship which was denied. Fox was given to Jules when he was a newborn puppy, and Jules denied Fox when he racked his brains to think of a suitable memento to give Lucinde, and could think of nothing better than a handkerchief-holder. The little beggar girl who appears as Jules watches Lucinde depart with Bernardi is included in Jules's temptation to drown himself, and Frederic Moreau cannot love Frederic Baslin because he dreams of a daughter who looks like Mme Arnoux, just as Emma Bovary cannot love Berthe because she dreams of a son named Georges. The tattered beggar girl appears at Fontainebleau in June 1848 when Rosanette tells of her own attempted suicide after being sold into prostitution by an unloving mother, and the servant of Bouvard and Pecuchet, Marcel, is associated with the miserable and bestial life which awaits abandoned children. These images describe a choice between two children which precludes the adequate loving of either, and the failure of Bouvard and Pecuchet as foster-parents is portrayed as the most serious of the novel. Since the names Adolphe and Eugene appear in BeP on the last / April of Flaubert's career, it is significant that this date of Adolphe's conception should be associated with the first name which appears on the gravestone of ^^^-Caroline-Josephine Flaubert in Rouen cemetery. By naming Marie Arnoux's son Eugene and having the choice between two 'sons' re-enacted on 22 February/March 1848, Flaubert places Marie's choice between Eugene and Frederic in parallel with Gustave's choice between Adolphe and a sister and niece who were both, in a sense, his children. The 22 March of a sister's death placed Flaubert in the position of assuming a substitute paternity for one who was of his own flesh and blood. Flaubert's relationship with the Schlesingers is dramatised most explicitly and symbolically in the novel which begins with
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the Ville-de-Montereau on 4/15 September 1840, Because of the
substitution of 14 September 1844 for 12 August 1843 later in the novel, the 4/15 September meeting with both the Arnoux couple in 1840 and the Dambreuse couple in 1844 occurs on a date which is also 13 August. The novel's first 13 August belongs to the proto-history of the hero, with the failed trip to the brothel in 1837, and Bouvard and Pecuchet will experience the coup de foudre on their first meeting of 13 August 1837 (11, 203). It would seem that Flaubert met the Schlesingers at Trouville on 13 August 1836. The August/September superimposition serves the purpose of having the 13 Augustfirstmeeting occur on the day before the 5 September 1840 marriage of Maurice and Elisa. When Deslauriers summons Frederic to the Cygne de la Croix, Mme Moreau claims that the time has been very well chosen, so it must be midnight, that arbitrary divide between the respectable and the deshonnete. Frederic's first disappointment therefore occurs at the beginning of the 5/16 September 1840 of the Schlesinger marriage, and the hint of secrecy in the inn's name is reinforced by the fact that the area inside the Cygne de la Croix belongs to the non-narrated. The narrated space is beside/above the river where 'les vannes etaient fermes' (11, 13), and the closed, cryptic spaces delimited by the Schleusingen (ECS, 247) betoken the Germanic myth of Lohengrin, the chevalier du cygne who is son of Parsifal, slayer of Frederick and husband of an Else who loses her husband by inquiring into his race and origins (B-G, 594-5). The heraldic myth explaining the symbol of so many Germanic families is a non-explanation: it places a taboo on investigation into the origins of a lineage, and the swan whose immaculate white feathers cover black flesh is a perfect symbol of the taboo on desire and engendering with which all origins are concerned. If the inn-sign 'Cygne de la Croix' also symbolises 'societes secretes' (CI671, 150), it is a perfect expression of the literary vocation as a confraternity of 'freres du cygne/ signe' who reveal the black ink under the whiteness of the page. The 'race des desherites' is that of all of the brothers of the swan who must not ask certain questions. From the realised elopement in ESi to the peafowl episode in
e
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BeP, the period of Adolphe Schlesinger's conception is always the occasion of a haywire distortion of the chronology or of a flirtation with the / April date which raises questions never answered. In ESi, the elopement period 12/22-17/27 March 1841 contains two references to a 'demain', 18/28 March, which never arrives, and one reference to a shawl like Madame's requested for the next Saturday, 21/31 March 1841. We have come to within one day of the / April 1841 conception date, just as in BeP the journey to Chavignolles of 20—g March/June 1841/ 1842 comes to within three days of that date, but not in the right year. Always that moment of conception is under a powerful taboo, so that the reference in MB to a patience which has lasted since / November i8jg, date of Judee's death, and a suffering since 1 January 1842, date of Adolphe's birth, does not survive into the definitive version except in the form of the patience dating from / November i8jg. The arrival in Yonville on a Tuesday 23/30 March 1841 is that of a woman in tartan whose pregnancy is detected by Homais in the NV, and the interest of the scene is enhanced by the parallel with Deslauriers's dismissal of the tartan-clad Clemence Daviou on 23/30 March 1847. Once again, the narration of MB stops with Leon's vision of Emma en peignoir at her window on 24/31 March 1841. Emma's death on a 24 March 1846 which is also, through the reference in the NV to the 'jour de la Chandeleur', la saint-Adolphe of 14 February, repeats the 14/24 February/March coincidence of the
arrival in Le Havre of ESi, and suggests that failed parenthood is a major part of Emma's problem. If the frightful taste of ink is what is poisoning Emma, then a literary vocation is to blame in more ways than one, as is indicated by Homais's epitaph: Sta viator..., which being decoded says 'Gustave il adore Emma B il l'aime ...'. Homais is the source of this tribute, in the presence of the punning Vaufrilard who accompanies the tombstone quest cau mois de fevrier, il y avait un an' (NV, 637). The quest for a monument a year after Emma's death on 14/24 February/ March/1 April is a reassociation of the 14 February of la saint-
Adolphe with the / April of Adolphe Schlesinger's conception. This is the date, in 1843, °f t n e floral annunciation of Eugene
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Arnoux at Saint-Cloud through the wound inflicted by the pin of the rose bouquet. The contradiction over how Charles's final meeting with Rodolphe and death on the following day can occur in August and also eighteen months after the death of Emma is solved through the fact that the meeting at Argueil occurs on 13/23 August/ September 1847, and that the calendar change of 23 August/2 September 1610 makes August the equivalent, in a second sense, of September. Charles wishes to be Rodolphe on a 13 August anniversary of Flaubert's first meeting with the Schlesingers which is also the 23 September of Elisa's birth, and he dies on a 24 August/September which is also a 3/14 September, date of Emma's crise nerveuse in 1843. The 14 February timing of Emma's death is verified by the 'repart pour Paris en fevrier' (G-M, 15) in the plans of ESu: Mme Eleonore dies on 14 February as well.
The repetition of the motif of the failed rendezvous or elopement is the occasion for some speculation as to the consequences of such a choice. Victor Hugo's experience in that regard is substituted for earlier efforts to symbolise the writer's own dilemma. If Hugo's choice brought about the guilt arising from a clandestine absence during the death of a child and an inability to write for almost a decade (JR, 100) following the events surrounding 4 September 1843, t n e n t n e lesson seems clear. The choice between the literary vocation and the pursuit of other forms of desire is not an easy one, but the consequences are painful in either case. Through the anachronistic substitution of the anniversary of Louise Revoil's marriage to Hippolyte Colet for the 4 December 1831 on which the last of the boulevard deaths occurred, Flaubert ponders the 'what if in the case of Louise Colet as well. By creating a 5 September/December coincidence which brings together Louise's and Elisa's marriages, and by superimposing them on the 4 September/December through which the boulevard deaths and the unrealised elopement of MB coincide, Flaubert testifies to the importance of the marriage question in his perception of the literary vocation. For all Flaubert's pronouncements against marriage in the correspondence, and for all the anti-marriage jokes in the
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literary works as well, the dates show that Flaubert was close to giving in to temptation on more than one occasion, but the 'ontological status' of that position is one that can never be determined, not even by the 'self. A pre-emptive marital status may even have been the condition of attraction to the desired woman, as the association of 5/16 September with the marriages of the Arnoux, the Dambreuses, the Roques, and even Frederic's 'notional' marriage to Louise indicate. When Deslauriers marries his best friend's intended on 5 December 1851, a certain relief is mixed with the horror, and it is male friendship which survives the 'betrayal'. Certain biographical mysteries involving the Schlesingers concern a coincidence of dates inviting all sorts of speculations as to the intimacy of the relationship. Since Marie-Adele Schlesinger's birth certificate stated that she was born on ig April 1836 of a 'mere non denommee', why did she change that information in the data she provided for her marriage certificate? The names Marie-Adele and Adolphe-Maurice are echoes of the names of her much-loved father, Moritz-Adolf, so the change to the name Marie-Adelaide and the birthdate 21 January 1836 constitute a denial of that paternity in favour of a name belonging to one of Flaubert's maternal ancestors and a date which anticipates the traditional date of birth of DesireeCaroline Hamard on 21 January 1846 (1, 12) by exactly ten years. Yet even that date is surrounded by mystery through the substitution of 21 February 1846 m the official birth records. These contradictions seem connected to the night of la saintSylvestre, 31 December 1843, time of the Schlesingers' New Year's Eve party at Vernon, and to the crise nerveuse of the following day. The last day of December/January is always avoided in Flaubert's fictions, and a clue may be afforded in Flaubert's 'non-fictional' pronouncements such as the affixing of the date 31 January 1857 as the date of the trial to the first edition of MB when Flaubert knew that Senard could not appear on that date. Substituting 31 January for the real date, 2g January 1857, creates a coincidence with the announcement of Rosanette's pregnancy on 2^/31 December/January 1848/i84g and indicates that Flaubert associated that point with great danger, as is indicated by
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the reference to 'carabines' on that date in both ESu and MB, where Binet's carabine is a sign of the detection of adultery unawares and of lies concerning the whereabouts or birth of a child. The danger threatened by MB's trial was disgrace and imprisonment; the danger of illegitimate paternity might have been the same if marriage were regarded as a 'lifetime sentence'. On JI December i84g on the Nile, Flaubert introduces Mohammed and a reference to scandalous behaviour a mere nine days after the repulsive revelations in the syphilis ward at Kars el-Aim (n, 567, 565). His account of the saving of his couverture by the yellow-skinned rais on 24 March I8JO (11, 580) may well be a cryptic reference to the source of his syphilis — especially in view of the omission of that date in the five-day time run in BeP, where Petit claims that he has deserved his miserable fate on 23 March 1830, last day of the festival of Minerva Medica, the goddess he has defrauded (11, 255). By superimposing a scandalous relationship on the most painful dates of his life, those involving Caroline and Elisa, Flaubert was consistent with his own practice of laughing at what he loved best (Cn, 61), of parodying the sacred (1, 358) to see what survived the ridicule. The reality of the encounter with Mohammed as the source of Flaubert's syphilis is both occulted and revealed by the encounter sous la tente between Matho and a Salammbo who has just been defined as a 'gargon malade' on 24 March/September in Salammbo and by the death of Emma Bovary on a 24 March 1846 which misses Caroline's death by two days and points the finger at mercury/arsenic as the cure that poisons, just as sexuality itself is the cure that kills. The 'joke gestations' in Flaubert's texts are concerned with the / April date of the poet's dialogue with Venus in the Fasti: the 'old wound' the poet has suffered in Venus' service will not prevent his homage: 'Hurt or whole, did I desert thy standards? Thou, thou hast ever been the task I set myself [Fasti, 189). Emma's impregnation by an orange-blossom bouquet on a 24 March/1 April which is also a 27 March/4 April occurs through
the association of oranges with the beginning of the year and
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through the coincidence that Venus was bathed and given a rose on / Aprils while Cybele's lavatio/lustratio occurred on 27 March/4 April (Fasti, 199, 213). The poet's wound and the wound of castration of Cybele's devotees is made to coincide with this superimposition of time, and Pecuchet's 'impregnation' with venereal disease on / April 184.1/1852 produces a rose crown of venereal sores that indicates that syphilis is another form of Venus' 'old wound'. Whether it be a question of cows straying into clover patches or of peafowl in rut who act out the vanity inseparable from sexual desires and from the Imperial enterprise through the symbol of the apotheosis of the Roman Empresses, the / April date is always both an All Fools' Day and the day of the Passion/Poisson d'avril, indicating that the combination of amorous folly and the octave of the Crucifixion/Hilaria are still operative. The coincidence of 27 March and 1/4 April makes the frenzied perambulation of the Napoleonic coach on the 27 March night of Napoleon's first meeting with Marie-Louise occur at the same time as his wedding of 1-2 April 1810. Hamilcar's saving of Hannibal on a / April through a substitute paternity is followed by the sacrifice of a substitute son on the 4 April of the Megalensia commemorating Rhea/Cybele's substitution of a stone for the new-born son Saturn wanted to devour (Fasti, 203). Once again, the Hamilcar-Hannibal relationship is defined through the 14 February/1 April coincidence which combines Hamilcar's return to his son with the / April of the maternal love for his son. The image of the pelisse/shawl/veil conveys the rift in the Schlesinger marriage in conjunction with the problem of paternity. The Flaubert who associated the in loco parentis role with actual fatherhood on numerous occasions (JVF, 64; Cn, 557) w a s aware of Maurice's gift of a 'somptueuse pelisse' to a wife who had to make do with worn-out stockings (G-G, 53), and this image of the traffic between wife and mistress is the basis of the cachemire and its association of 14/24 February/March with the / April of the lavatio. In ESi, Emilie Renaud's black pelisse with ermine trim first appears on the 12/22 March 1841 which anticipates a sister's
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death by five years, but Henry is first enveloped in the shared cloak on the 14/24 February/March/1 April 1841 of Le Havre, and it is this date which combines la saint-Adolphe with the conception of Adolphe Schlesinger on a night which also coincides with the date of Emma Bovary's death and with the quest for and retrieval of the £aimph. While 25 February 1847 is the date of the cachemire argument in ESu (11, 68), the coincidence of two days as one date afforded by the bissextile makes this evening another rendition of the 24 February/March date. Marie Arnoux saves Eugene on 12/22 February/March 1848 by giving him 'un polichinelle' (11, no), and it is this restoration of the Polichinelle father, who denies responsibility for the children he has engendered, which saves the life of an Eugene on the second anniversary of the death of an Eugene-Josephine-Caroline. The choice concerning paternity could not be made clearer: responsibility for another man's child of one's own flesh and blood precluded the acceptance of an alternative paternity. Marie Arnoux's second and final visit to Frederic on 22 March 1867, plus the interval of twenty months between that visit and the vision of two middle-aged bachelors in ESifs final scene of 22 November 1868, is a way of encoding the name Caroline Flaubert
at the end of Flaubert's masterpiece. The much-desired elopement with Elisa was precluded by the three family members who bore that name, and it is the maternal Caroline Flaubert who constitutes the obstacle through her loss of two daughters named Caroline and her gaining of an adopted daughter named Caroline on the date of her second daughter Caroline's death. The twenty-month life span of the sister who lived from 8 February 1816 to g October 1817 bears witness to the power of the dynastic imperative in the Flaubert family and of the individual's subjugation to inherited systems in general. When the final appearance of the / April conception date in BeP associates the vanity of sexual urges with the juxtaposition of a good Adolphe and a bad Eugene, the description of these two outcomes of the parental process is a Flaubertian confession: Adolphe, who is his mother's son, studies his German and is received into the Ecole Polytechnique, while Eugene begins
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by disobeying his father and ends by landing in gaol (n, 293-4). Mme Bordin's enigmatic pronouncements: c
Vous avez manque le coche, mon cher.' 'C'est de votre faute.' (11, 293) indicate that missing the coach of fatherhood was a 'faute' and that Flaubert's choice of Eugene-Josephine-Caroline's child over the Adolphe, whose paternity will always remain a mystery, was also the result of another coach/vocation. ALFRED/FREDERIC
Paul-Alfred Le Poittevin was Gustave's first literary mentor, so it is not surprising that the name Alfred should be associated with the motif of the self as a mirror image of the model or prototype in Flaubert's fictions. It is also part of the great debate over marriage and vocation which obsessed Flaubert: the news of Alfred's impending marriage on 30/31 May 1846 was one of the greatest shocks Gustave ever had to face, and the notion that a literary mentor could choose a rival form of happiness over the literary brotherhood or phalange became complicated by other forms of rivalry associated with the name Alfred during Flaubert's liaison with Louise Colet. On 6 July 1846, Alfred married Louise de Maupassant; in 1846, Flaubert formed close relationships with Louis Bouilhet and Louise Colet. The latter liaison was the cause of the complication of the Alfred motif: Louise's affairs with Alfred de Musset and Alfred de Vigny, sources of the name Alfred de Cisy of which Alfred Le Poittevin is also the prototype, added further dimensions to the subject of literary and amorous rivalry. Flaubert's response to the news of Alfred Le Poittevin's marriage in the letter of 31 May 1846 (Ci, 268-9) shows bitter disappointment. La Decouverte de la vaccine, an obscene parody of the Abbe Delille in the form of a hilarious five-act mock tragedy, is the less embittered response to Alfred's impending nuptials, a literary souper de garcon combining the ribaldry of the bucks' night with mourning for the 'tragic hero' being led to the slaughter.
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The souper de gargon motif recurs in the Alfred-Frederic relationship in ££11. Frederic's relationship with Alfred de Cisy is characterised by narcissism. Cisy is like a young girl (11, 16) and his clothes and carriage are admired by Frederic (11, 29). Alfred is Frederic's mirror image and Frederic is his; that is why he has no body. No description beyond the wearing of a lorgnon, copied later by Frederic, is ever given of the vicomte's appearance. Cisy needs so desperately to identify with male role models that he cannot lose his virginity unless it is with a woman who 'belongs' to one of his friends. That is why he first wants to 'borrow' Clemence Daviou, Deslauriers's mistress (n, 36), on 4 May/24 April/20 August 1843, an<^ elicits Frederic's help in the failed enterprise. Later, he has Frederic introduce him to Rosanette on 3 March 1847, then 'borrows' her for the night of 2-3 May 1847, not realizing that his friend's vanity might be wounded (n, 82). The 2 May 1847 of the Champ de Mars, the Cafe Anglais and Cisy's sexual initiation is referred to in the plans for the novel as having occurred both in April and in summer (G-M, 27-8), a temporal multiplication established by the Alhambra episode which makes 2 May 1847 the equivalent of 22 April and 18 August 1847. Alfred de Cisy's depucelage occurs exactly a decade before Alfred de Musset's death on 2 May 1857 (AF, 143). The reference to two bracelets in the context of the Cafe Anglais on a date which is also 18 August 1847 has further implications for the Musset-Flaubert rivalry. On 18 August 1852, the eve of the reading of Louise Colet's poem to the Academie, Flaubert took Louise to supper in Room 14 of the Cafe Anglais, the room in which she had supped with Musset a few weeks earlier. Later the same evening, an amber bracelet, a gift from Flaubert, was delivered as a tribute added to the 500 francs lent to Louise after she had informed Flaubert of Musset's initial overtures towards her (Cn, 893). Rosanette will later ask for a 500-franc loan from Frederic in connection with a duel fought in her 'honour'. Cisy is one of those associated with the number five in the novel: he is one of the five who share a cab on the way to the Alhambra (n, 33); on ig May 1847, at his souper de gargon for
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Anselme de Forchambeaux at the Maison d'Or, there are five different glasses for each place setting (11, 87), and his duel against Frederic is fought in a quincunx, indicating that there are five people present rather than the literal six, since Alfred and Frederic are one (11, 91). At the end of the novel, he is the head of a family often in Lower Brittany (n, 162). It is Cisy who refers to the Tuileries ball of 30 May 1846 at the cremaillere (11, 58), and this allusion to the moment Flaubert learned of Alfred Le Poittevin's impending marriage indicates that the individual who models himself on another tends to become the image in the mirror. Like Flaubert and Frederic, Cisy does not complete his law studies (11, 40), and like Frederic, he lives by an inheritance gained during the time of separation of the friends. The challenge issued on ig May 1847 at the Maison d'Or on the anniversary of the institution of the Napoleonic marshalate and Legion d'Honneur (PY, 17) leads to a duel fought on the anniversary of the Lannes-Bessieres duel of 21 May i8og at Aspern-Essling. Massena's interruption of the disgraceful spectacle of two marshals of France drawing on one another in sight of the enemy raises questions about the myth of fraternity implied by the phalange motif in Napoleonic mythology. If the strength of the phalanx comes from collective effort rather than individual strength, then rivalry and jealousy are the greatest threats to that collective solidarity. By situating the challenge and the duel on dates relating to Napoleonic fraternity, Flaubert raises the question of the Bonapartist legacy to his generation. In the Coptic calendar, 21 May is la saint-Thomas (G, 111, 324), probably because it coincides with the appearance of the constellation Gemini, made up of Castor and Pollux, in Ovid's calendar (Fasti, 315). In the Roman calendar, 21 December is the festival of Thomas Didymus, the saint whose name denotes twinship (Voragine, 39), and this makes the Alfred-Frederic duel in the Bois de Boulogne occur on the same date as Rosanette's masked ball of 21 December 1846. At that time, the 21 December/February coincidence had created a further coincidence with 3 March arising from the introduction of the new calendar on ig February/1 March 1700, so that the 21 December/
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May coincidence of la saint-Thomas makes the duel between two mirror images or doubles occur on the anniversaries of the Lannes-Bessieres duel of 21 May i8og and of the Leon-Louis Napoleon duel of 3 March 1840, as well as of the interrupted duel at Rosanette's ball. The fact that the Moreau-Cisy duel also anticipates by exactly one year the Fete de la Concorde/Fraternite (Duveau, 1848, 125; Carnets, ed. de Biasi, 377) of 21 May 1848 mentioned in Flaubert notes for ESu is further evidence for the failure of fraternity in Flaubert's fictions. The reason for this relates in part to the autobiographical dimension of ESn: Alfred Le Poittevin's son Louis was born on 22 May 1847 (D33, 55), a point never reached by the time run which ends on 21 May 1847 with the duel. Flaubert's rivalry with Musset for the affections of Louise Colet becomes a component of the duel episode which is every bit as farcical as the lampooning of the Napoleonic myth. Louise Colet's relationship with Musset, beginning on the 27 May 1852 of his reception into the Academie Franchise, continued with her visit to him on ig June 1852 to solicit his reading of her poem to the Academie on ig August 1852. Musset was to refuse this service, but his 'promenade au clair de lune' with Louise on 29 June 1852 became a weapon Louise could use to arouse Flaubert's jealousy, and the 'scene du fiacre' of the night of 3 July 1852 was the occasion of an outburst of rage on Flaubert's part. Musset had accused Louise of a theatricality similar to that of her stabbing of Alphonse Karr when she objected to his drunken behaviour, and Louise had thrown herself from the moving cab in a fit of bravado (Cn, 888). Flaubert's reaction to the news bears remarkable similarities to two episodes in ESn: to the challenge scene at the Maison d'Or on ig May 1847 and to the scene of Rosanette's interruption of the embrace between Frederic and Marie of 2g December/January 1848/i84g. Louise's report of Musset's 'tutoiement' strikes Flaubert as a 'soufHet sur la joue' (Cn, 129-30): 'Cet homme me paiera cette rougeur un jour ou l'autre ... je lui fourrerai ce pied dans le ventre, et quelque chose avec'. Rosanette's 'tutoiement' of Frederic in front of Marie on 2g
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December 184.8 is 'comme un soufflet en plein visage', and is followed by the mention of a 'fiacre' and a solicitation of money (11, 138). Frederic's aiming of a plate at Cisy's face at the Maison d'Or 'frappa le ventre du vicomte' (11, 89). There is no doubt that Louise Colet wanted to be the cause of a duel between Musset and Flaubert (Cn, 1089), and Flaubert gave Louise what she wanted - but at a seventeen-year remove which was twelve years after Musset's death, and in a derisory form which could flatter no one's vanity. The question of why Flaubert should associate the threatened duel against Musset with the 2g December and the ig May of ESn is answered by the May/December/June equivalence established in the novel: by focusing on the ig June of Louise's solicitation of Musset's favours and on the 2g June of the 'promenade au clair de lune', Flaubert is indicating that his quarrel was not so much with Musset as with a woman who was trying to provoke him into committing follies and giving her gifts and money. When Rosanette summons Frederic to thank him for fighting for her, she uses the excuse of a 500-franc 'loan', the exact amount of Flaubert's 'loan' to Louise after the fiacre episode. Other glimpses of Flaubertian 'duels' with Musset and Vigny concern the evening of 21 August 1852, on which the arriving Flaubert and the departing Musset almost met on Louise's staircase after Musset had delivered a cage containing two hummingbirds (Cle86, 243), and, far more seriously, the 4 May 1854 moment at which Vigny's status as Louise's new lover may have ended the liaison between herself and Flaubert permanently. Frederic's wish to commit suicide from the Pont de la Concorde on 24 April/4 May/20 August 1843 c a n be related to his interruption of the primal scene between Arnoux and Rosanette on 20 August/24 April/4 May 1842. The suspicion that Vigny played the role of the conquering Deslauriers/Arnoux is aroused by dates which coincide with the final break in early May (Douchin, 149). That the image of the admired model tends to be incorporated into the personality of the individual is indicated by the way Flaubert appropriates the name Alfred to himself in Le
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Chateau des coeurs, and satirises his own love for Elisa Schlesinger as the worst possible combination of vanity and self-seeking opportunism. The repetition of the name Alfred de Cisy here indicates the duplication of the model in the self as well as hinting at a continued resentment of the man who expects to attain happiness through romantic love. Elisa Schlesinger has become Ernestine Kloekher: the sluice/ecluse of the name Schlesinger (ECS, 247) has become a German name which resembles the Kloake or sewer. Ernestine-as-Venus Cloacina is a bourgeois banker's wife and a social snob, and Alfred de Cisy uses an introduction to his aunt, the Comtesse de Tremanville (cf. Cremanville) as a means of seducing her. His aim, however, is an influential position through the patronage of her husband: it is the banker he is 'courting'. After his heart has been restored to him, Alfred begs Ernestine to elope with him, but since her heart has been restored also, she feels an unaccustomed love for her husband. Flaubert's habit of ridiculing the things he values most, especially when he reflects on his own motives, is an attempt to combat the omnipresent vanity of human desire. Michel Butor (p. 182) says that the/eerie genre enabled Flaubert to express himself with a straightforwardness that makes Le Chateau des coeurs a valuable document for study. Alfred de Cisy lives beyond his means and his address is his club (11, 328). Through Alfred, Flaubert dissects the vanity of his own 'parasitic' existence as an artist, then shows how one would like to act in a world where all people are simple hearts. Of course, even in that fantasy world Gustave would not get the girl in the end. Alfred appears in BeP as the 'cousin' of Mme Marescot, a bored Parisienne who loathes the country and participates in the table-turning in company with her dashing but impertinent cousin from Paris who wears a blue coat (11, 263—4). Here, Alfred is the lover of a married woman, since Rosanette offered to pass Frederic off as a 'cousin' for a trip to the coast with the 'prince' in ESu (11, 102). The message of the table-turning episode of BeP is that it is just another form of narcissism, associated with Pellerin's career at the end of ESu (11, 162). For all that, Flaubert would bring Alfred back from the dead by any means, if he could.
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The traces of Alfred Le Poittevin in Flaubert's fictions show a self-critical awareness of having incorporated the self-mocking and self-pitying Alfred's image or reflection as an ineradicable part of the self. The bucks' party at the Oedipal House of Gold on ig May 1847 is an episode of high comedy in which the youthful vanity of both the self and the prototype is ridiculed with much affection. Alfred died more than once in Gustave's view: first on 30-1 May 1846 when news of the impending marriage arrived, then on the wedding day of 6 July 1846 and finally on 3-4 April 1848, during the Revolutionary period. In MB, Felicite and Theodore elope at Pentecost, 31 May 1846, at about the time of Leon's marriage to Leocadie Leboeuf (1, 690). May was regarded as an unlucky time to marry both in Christian France and in Ovid's Rome (Fasti, 297). Anselme's wedding on 20 May 1847, Cecile Dambreuse's in May 1850 and the Roque-Deslauriers marriage of a 5 December 1851, which is the equivalent of a j May, are all ill-omened. And almost no one attends Anselme's wedding: Gilbert des Aulnays is recalled to Saintonge by family illness, the Baron de Comaing is busy as Cisy's second and Cisy passes the time between the Maison d'Or and the duel of 21 May 1847 in fearful trepidation. In Le Sexefaible also, almost no one attends Onesime's wedding. When on 31 October 1844 Maxime Du Camp described Flaubert as 'le singe d'un etre corrompu, du Grec du Bas Empire, comme il le dit lui-meme' (Ci, 795), he seems to have struck a chord of awareness in Flaubert's perception of the relationship between himself and Alfred Le Poittevin. The problem of literary admiration in the context of personal disapproval is at the centre of the Alfred motif, but the fraternity of the literary phalanx was always strongest in Flaubert's estimation. AUGUST E/GUSTAVE
Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word? He is a brittle crazy glass: Yet in thy Temple thou dost him afford This glorious and transcendent place, To be a window, through thy grace. George Herbert.
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The Flaubert who described his prose as 'bourree de choses sans qu'on les apergoive' (Corr., in, 361) was not averse to hiding his signature in the margins of the text, as he showed when he wrote on the manuscript of MB that he began it on la saint-Gustave, ig September 1851 (Starkie, 211). Much earlier, in an outline for a five-act play which Bruneau (p. 122) dates at c. 1835, the names 'Auguste Trebnalf and 'Frederic Evatsug' appear. These anagrams of the writer's names have no part in the action of Deux Amours et deux cercueils, but the names and
subject matter of the play would suggest a post-August 1836 date of composition, for the Germanic forms of the names and the structures of the relationships suggest that the Schlesingers have influenced this reworking of Racine's Andromaque. In Un Parfum a sentir (1836), the play's triangles reappear: Pedrillo and Marguerite have three sons, Ernesto, Auguste and Garofa, and Flaubert conveys their ranking through age in such a devious manner that Sartre makes an error in identifying Ernesto as 'le troisieme - c'est-a-dire Gustave, intermediare entre Caroline et Achille' (IF, 1, 367). This is quite wrong: Auguste is the boy in the middle who disappears from the story after a failed attempt at tightrope dancing sees him land on his head: 'Pedrillo le releva avec un regard furieux; il alia se cacher en pleurant' (1, 56). Sartre is attracted to Ernesto because Ernesto's martyrdom is tragic, but Gustave is more interested in the second eldest of Pedrillo's three children, and what fascinates him is Auguste's pathetic mauvaisefoi. The seven-yearold Garofa has a flower name which answers to the daisy in Marguerite, and shows that Ruy Bias has influenced the appellation of this figure of Caroline-Josephine. Since Ernesto represents Ernest Chevalier as well as Achille Flaubert, the trio is that of the billiard table in the Hotel-Dieu. Auguste/Gustave is characterised by the malicious glee of self-marginalisation: since the patrons in the circus tent pay only on departure, Auguste /Gustave dissociates himself from the failure of the 'Flaubert Show' by disappearing into the audience and becoming the round- and ruddy-cheeked spectator who is unimpressed by the doomed struggles of 'L'HERGULE DU NORD' and family (1, 57). Auguste's exit from the family is blamed on
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Pedrillo's 'regard furieux', but blame is also attributed to the mother: Marguerite's return from the hospital prematurely 'de peur d'abandonner Ernesto et Garofa' (1, 57) shows a complete forgetting of her second son. And this forgetting is common to all the characters of the story until the moment, just before Marguerite's suicide, when she puts Auguste's name first (1, 66). What has to be 'sniffed out' in Un Parfum is that the real crime is the narrator's preference for Isabellada over the ugly, lame, toothless and redheaded Marguerite. If the mother's return coincided with the forgetting of Auguste, it is nonetheless true that Auguste hid himself before Marguerite returned to repeat his failed performance by landing on her head (1, 57). What Gustave has discovered through the Schlesingers is that it is possible to make a living from art: the 'Flaubert Show' with its endless agonisings and dutiful renunciations is not the only game in town. Like Maurice, Isambart makes his living through the performances of others: Isambart is a 'montreur d'animaux', but he gains most of his income through the charms of Isabella/Isabellada's dancing performances. Because Auguste /Gustave is a failed performer, he has stepped outside the Flaubert family's value system by adopting himself, on the sly, into the Schlesinger menage(rie). The punishing labour demanded by the Hercule/Achille father is shown to be pointlessly cruel by comparison with the effortless grace of Isabellada/Elisa and the entrepreneurial skills of Isambart/ Maurice. Gustave's guilt at abandoning the family's values is transferred to the parents: they forget his existence, so he is free to choose for himself. Un Parfum shows the name Auguste associated with action and acting, and that association continues in Rome et les Cesars (1839), in which the Emperor Augustus is seen as the imitator of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, and as one who is aware of the implications of his titles. On his deathbed, Auguste asks if he has played his role well, and the narrator adds that the Augustan age sees the end of the old faith: the Emperor's poets are forced to deify him, the augurs cannot look at one another without laughing, and the only 'religion' left to the poets is 'Pintime conviction de leur talent et du neant de la vie' (1, 219).
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The etymology of Augustus brings together augury, increase and awe (Suetonius, 57), and the Emperor's self-chosen title 'Divi films' emphasises the most important element in the title Augustus: the fact that, as Ovid points out in sycophantic fashion, it ranks the wearer with Jove supreme (Fasti, 43). Since Gustave Flaubert was baptised on 13 January 1822, the anniversary of Octavius' receiving of the title 'Augustus' according to Ovid (ibid., 43), and since Auguste is an anagram of Gustave (avium gestus gustusve), it follows that the writer is a Son of God. This is the substance of the imitatio Christi motif which links the two Augustes, Dussardier and Delamare-Delmar, in ESu\ acting and action are the basis of an opposition whereby one Auguste appropriates the accoutrements of Christ's image to himself through the peacock's vanity (11, 34), while the second Auguste re-enacts the life of Christ unawares and dies through the betrayal of a friend at the age of thirty-three on a Friday, 'les bras en croix' (11, 160). While Delmar wears Christ's hairstyle (n, 34), claims to have been crucified for art (11, 117) and becomes Christ in the popular mind (n, 71), Dussardier is a saviour: he saves children, and would throw himself under a carriage to save a horse, but the figure he saves twice, and again, unawares, is Rosanette/Hortense. Like Dambreuse, Dussardier saves a young girl by destroying a piece of writing (11, 152), and it is ironic that, while Dussardier and Clemence Vatnaz are the links between Hortense Baslin and RoseAnnette Bron, Dussardier never learns that the 'confectionneuse de lingerie' (n, 67) he saved and the Rosanette to whom he donates his life savings are the same person (11, 152). Victor Hugo's question: 'Apres Auguste, Augustule?' (Hemmings, 29) gives rise to many onomastic ironies, since it equates Napoleon I with Augustus and Napoleon III with the last Roman Emperor in the West, who reigned for only a year. Yet Auguste is also the name of another of Hugo's favourite targets, Auguste de Morny, 'Augustulus'' illegitimate half-brother whose paternal grandfather was Talleyrand and whose maternal grandmother was the Empress Josephine. Hortense Bonaparte used the name of the 'comtesse Henry de Morny' of Phila-
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delphia as a pseudonym through which to give financial support to 'the ward of Gabriel Delessert' (RP, 15), her unacknowledged son. The borrowed name Morny associates the man who was President of the Assembly with Cervantes' Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, for 'MORNY (due)' means 'mournful, melancholic' (Long, 44). Since Morny masterminded the coup of 2-4 December 1831 and defined the direction of France's financial policy during the Second Empire, the question arises which of the two illegitimate Bonapartes was the leader and which the follower, especially since the Emperor's fortunes deteriorated after Morny's death. Flaubert poses the question through sets of clown doubles who resemble Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (among others), and the most prominent of these pairs is Bouvard and Pecuchet. However, the novel announced as Flaubert's vengeance on the Delessert milieu is ESu, and it contains a set of names shared by two characters each: Olympe by Mme Regimbart and Elisabeth-Olympe-Louise Roque (n, 156, 42), Charles by Deslauriers and Charles-Jean-Baptiste Oudry (n, 12, 87), Clemence by Mile Vatnaz and Clemence Daviou (n, 150, 36), Baptiste by Martinon and Oudry (n, 15, 87) and Auguste by Dussardier and Delmar (11, 35, 52). Clemence Vatnaz reveals Dussardier as 'monsieur Auguste' at the Alhambra on 23 April 1843, an<^ accompanies 'Auguste Delamare ... Antenor Dellamarre, puis Delmas, puis Belmar, et enfin Delmar' to Rose Annette's masked ball of 20-1 June/December 1846.
Flaubert had every reason to resent the sons of Hortense de Beauharnais Bonaparte, who prosecuted his first novel and spoiled Trouville by making it the playground for the sorts of newly rich speculators who were least sympathetic to the religion of art and to free speech in general. But he was also honest and shrewd enough to realise that these illegitimate heirs of the Napoleonic legend were, like himself, the legatees of a mantle of Deianira, doomed to enact sterile repetitions of the first Emperor's feats. The poison of la gloire was in and under their skins and part of the soil from which they and all heroes are fashioned (Long, 183). Whether the possibility of authentic
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action, as opposed to the vainglorious acting out of preordained roles dating from the First Empire, actually existed in post-Napoleonic France is the question Flaubert poses through the Augustes of ESu. For it is no coincidence that Rosanette's Saturnalia occurs on 20-1 December 1846 and that the introduction of the Gregorian calendar to France makes 10 and 20 December coincide: 10 December 1848 saw the election whose results were announced on 20 December 1848 (A83, 73), when Louis Napoleon Bonaparte took his seat as President of France. Delmar's full name and pedigree are revealed on this 20 December 1846 of the masked ball, and Dussardier's identity as 'monsieur Auguste' is revealed on a Sunday 23 April 1843 which anticipates the first election of the new Republic on Sunday 23 April 1848, so the two Augustes are related to the fortunes of Republican/Bonapartist France. The coincidence of 23 April/ig August makes this moment coincide with Augustus' death, hence the end of the Augustan age (AF, 256). 'Monsieur' is the title of the king's brother; as such, it was Auguste de Morny's unofficial nickname during his halfbrother's rule (RP, 143). Bonapartism's uneasy alliance with Republicanism is further indicated by the naming of the histrionic Auguste at the masked ball whose alternative date is 20-1 February 1846: the French marshalate dating from 1047 was suppressed by the Assembly of the National Convention on 21 February iyg3, a month after the execution of Louis XVI (PY, 17), and revived by Napoleon on ig May 1804, forty-three years to the day before the Baron de Comaing tells Cisy that he is too young to join his club (n, 88). Rosanette's elevation to the marshalate therefore coincides with its suppression, implying that she is an illegitimate member of the 'club'. The alternative dating of the ball has autobiographical implications as well: the substitution of 21 February 1846 for DesireeCaroline's real birthdate of 21 January 1846 indicates that Flaubert associates his niece's birth, and that of 'MarieAdelaide', with a lost legitimacy which cannot be revived by a second generation. Napoleon III is not the legitimate ruler of France, and his illegitimate half-brother has no genuine claim to the title 'Monsieur'. La Vatnaz's small m for 'monsieur
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Auguste' on a 23 April 1843 which is also a ig August gives a hint of the reason. When Frederic attempts an apology for the broken parasol of 20 August 1842 at the Saint-Cloud jete of 1843, Arnoux accuses him of being 'malin' (11, 38) because Frederic's allusion makes the date of Augustus' engendering of Augustulus coincide with its place (DD, 5). 'The Emperor is a bastard' is the message of Frederic's gift. However, people who live in Gothic cathedrals shouldn't throw stones, and Freud's Goethe who is 'offspring of gods or of Goths or of dung' (Freud Library, iv, 298) is one of the 'Peres de l'art' for the Gustave who defines himself as a 'petit Goethe' (1, 218). However much homage Gustave pays to the fathers, the fact remains that the Muse is the greatest energiser of the artistic libido, and there are no moments of more multifaceted beauty in all of literature than the signature which brings La Legende de Saint Julien rHospitalier to its apotheosis through the
blending of the Gothic cathedral which is Gustave and the Elissa-^fe (Negre, 108) which is Elisa-Elisee. All that the writer has inherited from the Gospels and the Second Book of Kings is dedicated to the Muse in the homage culminating in the only use of the first person singular in Gustave's career. From the putrefaction of the Leper's body, Gustave carves out the columns and stained glass which are his signature: 'C'est comme de la glace dans mes os!' (11, 187) shows that the Leper's body is the quasi-immaterial cathedral whose structure/substance is the gleaming walls of light and stained glass. That this is a blending of like essences is shown by the metamorphosis of Julien's body, 's'arc-boutant', into the flying buttresses of the Gothic staff XhaX. is Gustave. The triptych structure of Trois Contes has carefully prepared for this moment when an upside-down parrot (11, 175) in a cage whose barrettes are his mistress joins an inverted dancing girl with coloured panels before her shining eyes (11, 198) to form a vitrail which is an upside-down text, read from bottom to top. In a mixing-up of beginnings, middles and ends, Herodias prepares the way for the translation of Elisa into the disciple of Elie who saw horses in the sky (above Honfleur!) at the moment
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of his inheritance of the mantle (11 Kings 3, 11—13). Through the 'errors' concerning Jacob's/Jairus' daughter (n, 196) and the Naamann (11, 191) cured of his leprosy by the disciple who is both Elie and Elisee (11 Kings 5, 9-10), Gustave creates a conflation of identity based on apostolic succession. The 'capitaine juif' (11, 198) who dies defending the Dove is Madman as well as Jacob in Herodias, and the shared identity of the Biblical heritage created by Gustave's 'errors' prepares for the moment when the prophet raises a child from the dead by becoming one body with the child's (11 Kings 4, 32-4). 'Comme Elie se ratatinant sur le corps de l'enfant mort' (1, 443) is an 'error' from TSA which indicates the shared identity of the precursor and the disciple. Through apostolic succession, Elijah and Elisha are one for Flaubert because Elisa is Elisee and Elie-Za, the text we read upside-down when we peruse the vitrail in a progression from Z to A. The journey back to Trouville or X . . . follows a path of reversed road signs in Novembre (1, 275) because the Muse is she who was there from the beginning and who will be there at the end. Since Julien is the son ofJules and Auguste is the son ofJules, Auguste/Gustave is Julien and Caroline-Augustine-Elisa is the daughter of Gustave as well as of Auguste-Frangois-Charles Foucault, the warrior. From behind the walls of the asylum at Illenau, Elisa was lost to the world, but Gustave's homage creates the vertical escape which death alone can afford to the mentally alienated. All the possible relationships of affiliation are combined in the vertical triptych of Trois Contes to pay homage to an art which can provide the only form of transcendence in an alienated world where loss is the rule. Uniting the bodies of Gustave and Elisa is a miracle which art alone can accomplish, and the coincidence of ends and beginnings forged out of Za a n d the vitrail makes the donor space and the throne of God one. There is only one story Gustave has to tell, and it belongs in the middle space of the vitrail!% three divisions, in the space of narration which mediates between the commercial activities of fishermen and the throne where the Son of God is one with God.
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If Gustave was not the father of Adolphe Schlesinger, then he certainly wanted to have been that father. Still, work is also an assurance of identity, and the labours of the sterile ox prepare the ground for fertility. BONAPARTE/BE AUHARNAIS
On emporte, quoi qu'en dit Danton, la patrie a la semelle de ses talons et Ton porte au coeur, sans le savoir, la poussiere de ses ancetres morts. C11, in The family is one's skin or mantle, like the name that goes with it, and Flaubert indicated his conception of the name—skin equivalence when he equated changing the name Moreau with whitening a negro: ' O n ne peut plus changer un personnage de nom que de peau. C'est vouloir blanchir un negre' (Corr., v, 427). No one who reads Flaubert can fail to notice the importance of cloaks, coats, veils and shawls, nor the strange sprinkling of yellow and pock-marked complexions in his fictions. While these symbols allow multiple interpretations, our purpose is to relate them to the Napoleonic myth in particular, for the mystery of the Man in the Blue Coat is a particularly inviting challenge. In the NV of MB, Homais thinks it scandalous that Theodore should wear a blue coat to Emma's funeral (NV, 628), in spite of the fact that the six coffin-bearers in the funeral procession are all 'en longue redingote bleue' (NV, 625). The blue coat is worn by Binet (NV, 245), Felicite's visitor (NV, 425), the cavalier at La Vaubyessard (NV, 212) and by the dashing father of Charles Bovary whose disillusioned wife later recalls 'son bel habit d'ordonnance, tout brode d'or' (NV, 509). The first items described by the narrator when Charles introduces Emma to his house in Tostes are those hanging behind the porte bdtarde: a blue coat and a 'peau de bique' (NV, 576). The suspicion that the blue coat is a military garment is confirmed by the descriptions of the Due d'Angouleme's blue uniform coat and red cordon of the Legion d'Honneur and Gorju's 'veste bleue' and raggedy red trousers in BeP (n, 241, 217). The last sentence
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Flaubert ever wrote begins with Bouvard's 'redingote bleue' and trails off with THotel de la Croix d'Or ...' (11, 300). A key to the interpretation of this garment lies in the bluish folds of the %aimph (1, 758), that anagram of Zji-faim which contains the Medicine God and his phallic attendants (1, 718). It is the Z to A and the A to Z of Punic mythology, the seamless web that unites the origins and destiny of Carthage (1, 709). It is fantasy itself, promising both sexual plunder and military glory. As Tank's body stretched over the sky pouring out light like milk and night like a mantle (1, 709), it is the mother's milk of mythology/ideology which defines the limits of desire for Tank's children. As the idealised Warrior's uniform coat, it conveys the heroism and romance of Bonapartism, that nineteenth-century version of the heroic ideal. The blue coat is worn by the legendary hero whose military exploits are no less grand than his sexual triumphs. Should we then be surprised to find that the man is the blue coat is always the Self in Gustave Flaubert's fictions? Senecal's 'longue redingote noire' (11, 26), shared with Deslauriers, is described as 'un gros paletot double de flanelle rouge' (11, 48) when Deslauriers wears it, then as 'son eternel paletot bleu, double de rouge' (n, 78) when Senecal regains the use of it. The Blind Man's sodden rags are also part of a blue-black confusion in MB (JVF, 531), but the sharing of a manteau that dates from the first night of the novel when Frederic shares his with Deslauriers (n, 14) has more in common with the 'etranges amours, unions obscenes aussi serieuses que des manages' which the shared cloak betokens in the military camps of Salammbo (1, 787). Illicit sexuality is repeatedly associated with the wearer of the blue coat: Frederic suspects the 'diplomate en habit bleu' (11, 95) of being Mme Dambreuse's lover in ESn, and Deslauriers is wearing the blue coat of a prefect's uniform when he marries his best friend's girl (n, 159). Felicke's blue-coated lover, whose description fits both Binet (JVT7, 245) and Rodolphe (NV, 329), joins the Bonapartist Bovary pere in his sharing of the favours of the mistress and the maid who live under the one familial roof in a 'commerce clandestin' (NV 457). Mme Marescot's
(
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'cousin Alfred' wears a blue coat and an impertinent expression in BeP (11, 263). In ESi, the mysterious M. Dubois whom the narrator cannot describe beyond the back view of a blue coat (1, 286) joins these incestuous military figures through his position in the quasiincestuous system of affiliations linking the Renaud, Dubois and Lenoir families. Like Napoleon, M. Dubois has gained a grown stepdaughter named Hortense by marrying an older woman; like Antipas in Herodias, he is all too multiply affiliated with the members of his extended family. Henry, who does not realise that the man in the blue coat, the young dandy with the lorgnon and Aglae's brother are all this same M. Dubois, nevertheless apes his style of dress and his Oedipal feat in appropriating the Mother. Henry is wearing a 'fine redingote bleue' when he humiliates the husband of the woman he has stolen and abandoned (1, 384). However, the cane which slashes M. Renaud's hat into two is not what slashes his cheek in Flaubert's version of the LaiusOedipus confrontation: it is a sliver of blue glass from Renaud's own spectacles that inflicts the wound. The blue coat is dependent for its appeal on the viewer's desire to see cen bleu'. As Jules watches the retreating figures of Lucinde and Bernardi in the distance, their image changes from that of a large black dot on a white road to cdu bleu et quelque chose de flottant comme une robe', but only after the sun acts as a kind of 'verre de couleur' in Jules's imagination (1, 313). While the goatskin cloak expresses a paternal inheritance which is 'trop lourd' in Salammbo (1, 773), it is the sign of apostolic succession in TSA (1, 378, 523). However, the peau de bique which hangs beside the blue coat at Tostes is the emblematic equivalent of the Croixmare family tree behind the door at Chavignolles (11, 234-5), a n d the presence of Eschmoun-Aesculape and the Kabires in the blue folds of the Zjiimph (1, 718) shows that the Carthaginian peplos is a version of the goatskin cloak from Champagne, passed from Achille-Cleophas to Achille Flaubert. Matho's theft of the veil shows that it is a symbol of plunder as well as of Hamilcar's dream of an eternal Barca empire through the agency of his descendants (1, 792). Hamilcar's red cloak (1,
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728) is that of the Spartans and of the priests of Moloch, so the upbringing 'a la spartiate' which Bovary pere inflicted on Charles (1, 576) is part of the imperial enterprise whose final point is the apotheosis of the Emperor-Father and his heirs. The authoritarian nature of the legacy is indicated in the lining of Senecal's blue-black coat: for Flaubert, Bonapartism is as authoritarian as early Socialism. It is more than coincidence that Godefroy Cavaignac's memorial service commemorates Napoleon and Napoleon-Charles on 5 May 1847 (11, 87). If red is the colour of the blood-red rose of Revolution, it is also the peacock ponceau of the ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur which so many of Flaubert's protagonists crave. Cisy is refused membership of Comaing's club on the anniversary of its institution, ig May 1847 (11, 88), and Deslauriers wears a false red ribbon to impress Clemence Daviou. Emma and Leon come across a 'ruban ponceau' in the boat in Rouen. Membership of the Legion Sacree is beyond the reach of the Mercenaries at Carthage, so the inconceivable pleasure of drinking from the gold cups of the Legion becomes every Mercenary's greatest desire (1, 696). The other side of the blue of fantasy is the red of blood and passion, and the stained-glass window of the house at Chavignolles contains a 'manteau ecarlate' and angel's wings as all that can be seen among the glass splinters and lead (n, 235). Since angels' wings are made of peacocks' feathers according to legend (CI671, 290), the vanity of the imperial enterprise is expressed here as clearly as it is in the portrait of Rose-Annette, for the red contained in 'Rose' (Long, 22) is also the ponceau of her velvet robe and purse and of the peacock behind her (n, 62, 93)Senecal's blue-black coat lined with red is a symbol of the dangers of the imperial enterprise. A political opportunism which recognises no commitment to anything beyond a grandiose sense of self is reflected by Senecal's coat-turning at the time of the 1851 coup, but this has more to do with Senecal's patriarchal sense of authoritarianism than it has with Bonapartism. However, a mythology/ideology based on little more than an invitation to self-enrichment and self-advancement
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through plunder masked by glory is bound to create strange bedfellows. It is with such figures as Gorju and the Blind Man that the meaning of the blue is revealed. Gorju's wretched return from seven years' fighting in Algeria shows the public response to the unsuccessful warrior's return. Even the Orleanist regime has to foster the Imperial myth through such feats as the 'retour de Sainte-Helene' and the Algerian War, because the nation wants to share vicariously in the warrior's sense of conquest. The guests at Chavignolles who deplore Bouvard's gift of the dregs of the wine bottle to this ailing and wounded ex-soldier on the grounds that it could encourage vagrancy (n, 217) are no different from the Homais who demands that the Blind Man be locked away so that the truth he incarnates may be suppressed. That truth is multi-dimensional in Flaubert's terms: the Blind Man's body is a 'tete guillotinee' (jVF, 532), another form of the Amboise bell which cracked when Louis XVI went to the guillotine (NV, 492). Flaubert's observations of French history convinced him that the Republic was not really what people wanted, that Tidee monarchique' (1, 359), understood in mythical terms, was the inevitable outcome of Republican 'experiments'. Both suspensions of royal rule had produced turmoil and the emergence of Bonapartism as an authoritarian promise of order in the midst of the chaos of Republican interludes. The almost-nineteen-year-old writer who produced Rome et les Cesars in 1839 was in favour of the orgiastic and voluptuous rule of the Roman Empire (1, 218) and the grandeur and excesses of Napoleon, Nero and the Marquis de Sade (1, 223). The blue manteau of Bonapartism comes to indicate both the triumph of Marengo and the lowest ebb of the Emperor's fortunes: it was during the terrible journey south through the Royalist areas of France that Bonaparte wore the disguise of blue cloak and round hat (Delderfield, 280) which are components of the Blind Man's garb. His Vieux castor defence, s'arrondissant en cuvette' (NV, 531) combines the self-castration of the castor (CI671, 81) with the round hat of the reviled Emperor as Christ among us. If the sodden blue rags which make their first appearance on the day of the Emperor's
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desertion of the Grande Armee in Russia, 5 December, refer to the Emperor's children left behind in the snow, the round hat conveys the Emperor's suffering as well. What Flaubert admired in the Roman Empire was its lubricity and energy. Instead of an egalitarianism of brute beasts, Emperor worship was based on the extended family: 'La societe se modele sur Pempereur' (1, 219), csa gloire eternelle' (1, 218) effaces the memory of the Christian empire that succeeded it. It is at one with 'la terre du materialisme ou plutot du sensualisme poetique, car le sol ici est plus poete que tous les poetes du monde' (1, 218). The elemental nature of the imperialist enterprise is indicated by the man-god's own capacity for suffering: 'il est comme la nature, tourmente d'une grande douleur' (1, 220). The sense of energy and heightened human potential is included in this suffering, and the 'martyrs chretiens' who have replaced the Greek heroes and Roman Emperors (1, 218) have a secular equivalent as well, though the Homeric rhapsode whose seasonal return with the spring is invoked in Mademoiselle Rachel (1, 229) indicates that the writer-as-hero has the longest pedigree of all. The narrator of Memoir'es d'unfou, though highly aware of his own impotence and sterility (1, 243), realises that Art is similar to Imperial vanity (1, 242-3). Immortal longings are not the monopoly of those who wear the purple, and the pain of the Emperor is similar to that of the artist who realises that there are no legitimate origins: 'car tu descends, comme tous les hommes, d'un inceste' (1, 244). Since our origins lack authorisation, the great are those who, with the narrator of Agonies, recognise that vanity is the basis of all actions and that la gloire is a lie (1, 158). Glory is utterly irresistible for both the warrior and the writer, for it is founded on beauty. The Emperor and his twenty-six marshals, who repeat in duplicate the number of disciples including the traitor, are heroes. They are heirs to the Roman and Christian Empires, secular saints, and even their betrayals, bunglings in battle and humiliations have the shape of myth, for they are based on the notion of the world as a large family. The Paul de Monville who mates an orang-outang with
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a negress in Quidquid voluerisfindsnothing wrong with this form of experimental engendering, since it gained him the Legion d'Honneur at the age of twenty (1, 108). The Mazza Wilier whose warrior surname (CY, 314) matches the killing, amazzare, in her first name is so resolute in her will that the murder of husband and children carries no guilt: when her callous seducer advises her to despatch herself promptly with prussic acid, she does not question the order but hurries to the apothecary's shop where Napoleon's battles are depicted on the wall (1, 123). Mazza's alienation from the common lot began on an August day when Ernest deserted her and, draped with a red cloak, she watched a wedding from her 'belle caleche' (1, 119). Those whose desires place them beyond the range of the ordinary are not subject to ordinary morality. They desire greatly and suffer greatly. That the blue manteau was always the Purple is indicated by the colours of the £aimph, which Salammbo saw as something bluish and shining (1, 758). In the temple, it is blue, purple and yellow (1, 718), and purple is the colour which is at the linguistic origins of the Canaanites and the Punic Phoenicians, who derive their identity from the dye of a murex shell and from the palm tree associated with the resurrection of a fabulous bird from the flames of its own self-immolation. The dawn-coloured yellow of the £aimph is the promise of eternal youth and romance in the Imperial mythology. The Gorju who coincides with the first man Elisa loved, Judee, joins the Blind Man as a figure of the disillusionment which follows when the gold braid is stripped from the blue manteau and its blue-black tatters reveal the sodden soil of lapatrie from which it came. The yellow of the £aimph is also the colour of the Emperor's parchment-coloured skin, and the fact that the corpses of Dambreuse (11, 145), Virginie Aubain and Victor Leroux (n, 172), Frederick Baslin (11, 155) and Emma Bovary (jVF, 616) are all yellow shows that they have returned, in death, to the soil from which they issued. The yellow skins of Tellier (NV, 561), Taanach (1, 708), Mignot (11, 137), Alvares and Mendes (1, 282), Pecuchet (n, 224, 249), Frederic Baslin (11, 148), Pedrillo's sons (1, 56), Clemence Vatnaz (11, 34), Rosanette (11, 139) and
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Schahabarim (1, 709) all belong to creatures of strong desire, and Hamilcar's yellow marble palace reminds the Mercenaries of the solemn and impenetrable face of the man who has a yellow-spotted horse as his mount and who hides his face under a saffron-coloured veil on his return to Carthage (1, 694, 743, 729). Rosanette's pregnancy announces itself with yellow facial blotches and the child she bears is a hideous yellow-red object (11, 139, 148). Pecuchet's complexion is the most developed representation of this motif: he begins with the brown skin and elongated cylindrical torso (11, 202, 221) of the Bonaparte-Beauharnais blend of Corsican and Creole features, proceeds to the sallow stage of a typhoid-related condition and ends with the coppercoloured rose crown (n, 269) worn by Arnoux at the end of ESu (n, 151). Before the heart became the privileged seat of the passions, that role was filled by the liver (Rowland, 180), and jaundice, as regius, arquatus morbus or aurigo, was the 'royal disease' (ibid., 17). Voragine describes homicidal jealousy as 'a complaint of the liver' (p. 213), and Pecuchet is described as bilious, of authoritarian tendencies, a sans-culotte and even a 'robespierrist' (11, 239). His 'mine jaune' is lamentable, and he sees everything 'en noir, peut-etre a cause de sa jaunisse' (11, 249), the result of his literary studies (11, 248). Napoleon Bonaparte's yellow skin is a symbol of his imperial ambitions, as well as of a venereal disease resulting from a recourse to prostitutes necessitated by social mores which deny the impoverished young man opportunities for legitimate sexuality. When Flaubert describes the fourteen-year-old rats on the Nile as having yellow skin (11, 580), he is encoding his own estimation of the source of strong desire. Pecuchet's skin first becomes yellow at the time of the fad for inserting thermometers in backsides: because of his 'teint un peu jaune', he suspects a 'maladie de foie' (11, 224). The spread of typhoid fever in the district is described immediately after the mention of the thermometer fad, and Vaucorbeil's words in the context of the name Francois Raspail hint at a cause-and-effect relation: 'C'est un veritable meurtre!' is followed by 'Vous perforez
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Tintestin' (11, 223) - and these were RaspaiPs words at the time of Caroline-Josephine's death, according to Maxime Du Camp (Naaman, 20). When Eugene Arnoux's cure is made to coincide with the Caristia in ESn, Flaubert avails himself of the practices of this festival of family forgiveness to absolve Achille Flaubert of guilt for his sister's death, but the sulphate of quinine used to combat Caroline's puerperal fever reappears in the quintes of the accursed little quin who will not go away. Treating a childbirthrelated fever as though it were a typhomalarial condition is a sign of incompetence, and Eugene's tricolore complexion during the crisis never becomes yellow because he expels the paternal ordonnance (11, no). Whether Achille was to blame or not, the fate of Caroline affected Gustave deeply, and there is a connection between his vision of the consequences of heterosexual fertility and the yellow-skinned body of Mohammed. Those with pock-marked faces like Homais (1, 599), Mme Aubain (11, 176), and various minor characters of ESu (11, 42, 76, 152) including Compain (11, 118) are the opposites of the sallowskinned characters, as La Decouverte de la vaccine shows. Their desires are no less strong, but have been repressed through a brush with danger. Their pitted faces are the signs of the ravages of a passion which threatened to destroy them, and which has either inured them to further strong feelings or produced the sly, salacious yet sublimated sexuality of a Homais. The names Bonaparte and Beauharnais appear very rarely in Flaubert's fictions because they are, in a way, the names of everyone's family; and the use of the term 'petite fete de famille' or 'veritable fete de famille' for almost every social gathering, including the Cornices Agricoles, shows how strongly the nation identifies with its royal or imperial prototypes. Homais's ij August newspaper article on the Cornices in the NV of MB describes the event as 'cette veritable fete de famille' (jVF, 371): the imperial family is everyone's family, as Lieuvain's anachronistic allusion to 'votre invariable attachement au parti de l'ordre' (NV, 355) indicates. In BeP, the parti de Vordre is not formed until 1849 (11, 254); in ESn, we watch its germination on
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28 June 184.8 (11, 134). Its most typical incarnations are the Comte de Faverges and the diplomat Paul de Gremonville: the count has a daughter named Yolande, Violet' (CY, 206), and Gremonville is a Flaubert family name. Whether knowingly or not, everyone is a Bonapartist, so Lieuvain's Orleanist propaganda is a mere cover for a philosophy described in the NV as 'bonapartiste', not a surprising inclination for one 'ayant le teint jaunatre' (NV, 350). The Cornices themselves are held on / j August 1842/1853, the great national holiday decreed by Napoleon III in honour of his uncle's birthday. Rodolphe's reference to 'ce culte rendu a une femme' in connection with Emma's gold medallion of cla Sainte Vierge' (NV, 361) is a reminder that la saint Neopolus falls on Assumption day, the principal feast of the Virgin. The coupling is not so astounding when we remember that the idea of an Assumption is derived from the classical tradition of the apotheosis of the hero, itself based on the imagery of Roman triumphs. Perhaps Bonaparte and the Virgin have more in common than the blue manteau? The cult at the 13 August Cornices is supposed to be Orleanist, but Lieuvain's apparent efforts are indeed in vain, as much in vain as Charles's efforts to change his form of treatment: cil avait beau varier les potions' (1, 636) summarises one of the aspects of BovaryI'beau varie. All variations are in vain; all return to the heroic imperial model. Homais's newspaper article shows that the venerable patriarchs of the agricultural fair which is a family get-together are the 'debris des immortelles phalanges qui ont visite toutes les capitales de l'Europe' (NV, 371). Bonapartist propaganda is stored in the unconscious with all the other humid and humous repressions that constitute the wealth of French soil as la patrie.
Adam/Edom/Homo/Homais/
Hero: all are linked through traditional philological notions with the earth which is man (Long, 183). The man who accompanies Emma on her final nostos of 22 March 1846 is Homais, and the final version of man which awaits Emma is the male substance: arsenic. The Homais who names his eldest son Napoleon, who dreams of the Legion d'Honneur and whose children are honoured with a toy designed for the
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King of Rome (JW, 458) is in thrall to the Bonapartist myth, and the Charbovari who was shouted down by the charivari of his uniformed classmates is suppressed precisely because his garb differs from that of his fellows. When the Blind Man appears as the tattered version of the blue coat, the other side of the myth, his presence becomes intolerable to Homais, for he is living evidence of what is past and irremediable. Homais prefers to dwell in fantasies of a past bursting with lascivious opportunities for plunder projected on to a future full of equal promise. The Blind Man is the legend at its lowest ebb, the remnant that straggled back home, dilapidated but still dreaming of gleaners in short dresses who bend down to gather an eternal summer harvest and of 'fillettes dans les bois' (JVF, 531). If the blue manteau is also purple, red and yellow in the end, it is because Bonapartism is as Molochistic as the regime associated with the red cloak in Salammbo. The blue of self-apotheosis can only be achieved at the cost of the young blood shed by Spartan regimes. The presence of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in Flaubert's works is a subject in itself, but some introductory remarks on his depiction in Trois Contes and BeP will be indicative of Flaubert's method. First, the fact that both these works were written after Napoleon Ill's death shows both a sensitivity to the continued threat of censorship and prosecution under a Napoleonic regime and a concern to analyse an era and a regime only after it has finished. The 'Badinguet' who called his son 'Loulou' and who defined the 'University of Ham' as his 'right place' (Corley, 42) is both a sympathetic and an unsympathetic figure, a persecutor and a victim. The question of legitimacy is to the fore in the depiction of the 'perroquet melancolique' (Brodsky, 114) of Un Coeur simple: by making Loulou a blending of the figures of Louis XVI, Louis XVII, Louis-Philippe and Louis Napoleon, Flaubert has raised the question of the legitimacy of Bourbons, Orleanists and Bonapartes. 'La mere Simon' introduces the gaoler couple who blew smoke in the face of Louis XVI during his imprisonment in the Temple and who taught the vulnerable Louis XVII to
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repeat incestuous calumnies against his mother and sister. The 'barette' of Felicite's surname symbolises the bonnet rouge as well as the calotte, and suggests the intimate relationship between gaoler and prisoner. Louis Napoleon had the potential power to imprison and to muzzle Flaubert, as the trial of MB showed, but the writer has the subtle weapon of ridicule in his armoury. It is even possible that the constant threat of persecution/ prosecution is a strengthening force in the literary enterprise. The most stunning sense that emerges from the relationship between a Felicite Barette who is Flaubert and a Loulou who is a repetition of a glorious imperial model is that of reciprocity. The annunciation which occurs when the parrot's wings and the servant's bonnet quiver in unison is an admission that there has been a cross-fertilisation between the literary and political worlds, and the coincidence that the 8 June Assumption combines the deaths of Louis XVII and of George Sand is a further indication of the rival worlds of the political and the literary and a recognition that royal/imperial figures are imprisoned by the legacy of the past. Loulou's death in the terrible winter of 1837 might just as well be the death of Louis Napoleon in exile on g January 1873, or that of Louis XVI on 21 January iyg3> and the sad little figure with an overly long torso on stubby legs is a victim of the repetition that is heredity, both genetic and ideological. As a figure of the St Peter identified with the pun perro-roquet, the second Emperor is the heir of a legacy from the man-god, another Moloch figure whose name, from loup-loup, symbolises the imperial regime's need to provide conquests, hence to devour the sons of France. It is quite possible to deplore a regime while sympathising with the figure who personifies that regime. In BeP, the ambivalent attitude persists, as the figures of Louis Napoleon and Morny combine with the figures of Napoleon and Talleyrand, the prototypes, and with various combinations of the relationships involving those figures and their fathers/sons to produce a pair whose characters dovetail perfectly. If Bouvard has Morny's baldness and the Bonapartes' tendency to corpulence, Pecuchet has Morny's slimness and the
c
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coiffure of the 'Corse aux cheveux plats'. Napoleon took snuff, Louis Napoleon smoked; Pecuchet takes snuff, Bouvard prefers to smoke. In an anticipation of dendrochronology, Flaubert uses a motif of cut-down trees to maintain the message that the end of the second imperial experiment was the destruction of many of France's monuments and a revival of bitter factionalism. Just as Napoleon's regime suffered from Talleyrand's self-removal from the political scene, so the Second Empire suffered from Talleyrand's grandson's death. Flaubert's persistent method of finding the sympathetic in what was least congenial to himself, and vice versa, has paid dividends in BeP. The clown-doubles who attempt to impose vaguely grasped models on nature and society are doomed to failure from the start, but the fact that their relationship is the one surviving example of solidarity is an acknowledgement of the importance of the personal as a dimension of experience. The more self-indulgent Bouvard has libertarian, liberal principles while the Jacobin Pecuchet has the authoritarian convictions of the terrorist who has had a less comfortable existence. Bonapartism-as-Moloch-worship was too simplistic an answer to the problems raised by nineteenth-century French history, as is indicated by Hamilcar's role in the sacrifice to Moloch. It is the people of Carthage/France who sacrifice their sons to the Minotaur symbol used by Napoleon's enemies as a figure of the Corsican Ogre himself. Hamilcar is the only Carthaginian calm enough to resist the frenzied Oedipus/Laius urge, but Hamilcar is not exonerated, since the situation of the sacrifice on the 14 Nyssan/4 April which combines the crucifixion and Ovid's account of Saturn's devouring of his own children (Fasti, 203) implies that the man-god always requires sacrificial substitutes through the knowledge that he is the prime victim of the sacrificial impulse. In Saint Julien VHospitalier, the fatality of this role is conveyed through the double prophecy of 'la famille d'un empereur' and sainthood. Since boulevard wits claimed that the only thing Napoleon III had inherited from Napoleon I was his insatiable sexual appetite (Brodsky, 162), Flaubert uses the framework of sexual relationships to emblematise the First Empire's legacy. In BeP,
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the links between Bouvard and Mme Bordin reflect the descriptions of the relationship between the French Emperor and the English Queen/Empress as 'love-making' and as that of an old 'married couple' (Brodsky, 172; Corley, 171). The moment at which Bouvard-Napoleon and Mme Bordin-Victoria are closest is during the mating of the peacock and a peahen which symbolises the vanity of the imperial enterprise through the peacock symbol of the apotheosis of Roman Empresses. This open-air moment of sexual indulgence on a / April which repeats Adolphe Schlesinger's conception date and Napoleon's marriage to Marie-Louise frightens the barnyard horse, whose frenzied flight drags the freshly hung washing through the dirt. Aside from the Bonapartes' tendency to air dirty linen in public, this riotous scene is reminiscent of a phrase which summarised sexual mores in the 'Victorian era': one shouldn't frighten the horses. The scene primitive between the bestial Romiche and the adolescent Victorine (11, 299) reflects the eternal tendency of Europe's royal families to see the parvenu Bonapartes' marital ambitions as the Minotaur's embrace. Its situation on 2g/30 January 1868 (G-M, 35—6), when Victorine is fourteen, is a reference to Prince Napoleon's marriage to the youthful Clothilde on 30 January i8jg (Brodsky, 218), sixth anniversary of Louis Napoleon's marriage to Eugenie on 2g—jo January 1853 (AF, 43). Since 2g January i8jy is the suppressed date of the trial of MB, the trial of Dauphin is a re-enactment of the literary prosecutions of the Second Empire, especially that involving Rochefort and the smuggling into France of Victor Hugo's diatribes inside plaster busts of the Emperor. By making Bouvard and Pecuchet figures of the old and the young Emperor and of the old and the young Flaubert, the writer acknowledges the changes in complexion brought about by time. Although each person is many different people at once, there is a conflicting sense of continuity in the shape of a destiny which assists the illusion of discrete and continuous identity. Of the three great French revolutionary/imperial myths, fraternity is the one that survives, battered and disillusioned but hanging together in the perilous form, symbolised by Charbovari's casquette and the crucified Mercenaries/lions, of
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the barely intact, meretricious society that is Carthage /Napoleonic France. EMMA/EMILIE
In Deux Amours et deux cercueils (Bruneau, 122-3), t n e n a m e Amalie/Amelie does not appear in the list of characters of the drame, but plays an important role in the plot outline: the 'courtisane parvenue et envieuse de Louisa' lives in the d'Hermans/d'Harmans household, stealing Louisa de Belleville's possessions little by little as she poisons her mistress by administering arsenic in the milk day by day. Emma Bovary's fear of 'un autre poison plus fort' at Berthe's mention of the word 'nourrice' in MB (1, 682) is an indication of the etymology of the names Emma and Emilie IAmelie. Although the names are not synonyms, folk derivations have always treated the two as the same name (CY, 141), so the 'work'/'spotlessness' of Emilie join the 'nurse' of Emma (ibid., 329) in the conflated name. The name Hermans/Harmans is a Germanic warrior name (ibid., 327), but a derivation from the Harmonia/Hermione of Thebes is also indicated by Yonge's explanation of another folk etymology (ibid., 328), and 'Mme Herminie' becomes the prototype of Henry's love for Emilie and Jules's love for Lucinde in ESi (1, 314, 324). Since America and Melusine are also derived from the same root as Emilie (ibid., 330-1), Flaubert puns on those associations through the elopement in ESi and through the concept of women as demons below the waist in BeP(n, 262). In Flaubert's last novel, all the associations of the name are played upon. Melie comes from Ouistreham (11, 232) - an anomaly in itself, for it is variously derived from 'est' (D&R, 513) and 'ouest' (AL, 182). 'Ham', for Longnon, is home, 'a la maison, chez soi', so the orphaned Melie is a living proverb: East, west, ham's best. Throughout BeP, Melie is associated both with work and with the nurse's function of providing liquid refreshment: she is 'rude a l'ouvrage' (11, 232), and first appears as a child whom the gleaners of Faverges's farm have taken up to serve them drinks during the harvest, an event the Comte associates with the immorality of rural ways (11, 209). Melie's
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hair is wheat-coloured (n, 232), and Frazer describes the custom of adopting a stranger with hair colouring personating the ruddy grain spirit as a water carrier for the harvesters (p. 500). Such passing strangers were sacrificed by being killed and thrown into the river as a rain charm at the end of harvest (ibid., 559-60, 583). Melie is saved from this fate by Faverges, but later dismissed from his employment — 'par suite de faux rapports' (11, 236), according to her version, but she seems to fear the knowledge Faverges has of her behaviour from the time of the harvest, two years before Faverges's visit. The motif of oats is used to signal the mystery of the source of the venereal disease passed from Melie to Pecuchet. When Gorju returns from seven years' fighting in Africa, Bouvard gives him wine lees to drink when he is thirsty, despite the objections of the dinner guests (11, 217), and Gorju disappears into the oatfield. When thirst attracts Bouvard and Pecuchet to the Castillon farm, they find Gorju and Melie working there, and when Gorju announces his intention of marrying Melie when he is rich, the stable boy slams the lid down on the oat barrel, which is revealed as a 'bahut de la Renaissance' with scenes symbolising woman's perfidy depicted on its panels (11, 232). The stable boy's violent reaction indicates sexual jealousy, and since Mme Castillon is later revealed as Gorju's mistress along with Melie, the venereal communication system becomes rather complicated, especially in view of the fact that the plans for the end of the novel indicate that Melie's later pregnancy is to be attributed to Bouvard and that Melie is to become the wife of Beljambe, innkeeper at the Croix d'Or (11, 301). Since Mme Castillon threw her own gold cross at the departing Gorju on 6 June 1848 (11, 260), the number of Chavignollais infected seems almost limitless. Oats are first mentioned as fodder for hens at Faverges's farm (11, 210); Bouvard and Pecuchet then put the napoleons earned by the sale of their fodder into an oat box (11, 210); the next year, the oat crop is mediocre (11, 232) and they feed their pigs salted oats, which make the animals overexcited (11, 212).
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Germaine requests the help of the girl who looks after the hens for the dinner party which ends with Gorju's departure through the oats (11, 217). Oats become the source of a chemical mystery when VauqueHn's experiments show that the amount of chalk in eggshells is greater than that in the oats fed to hens (11, 222). Vaucorbeil diagnoses Pecuchet's venereal disease and selfhypnosis beside a field of oats (n, 269), and the vision of the dog's corpse which precedes the suicide temptation occurs beside a field of ripe oats (11, 275). When Bouvard and Pecuchet fail to seek a solution to the mystery of the smashed Renaissance oat chest (11, 242), they fail to realise that Melie and Gorju were together in the hay loft, and Mme Castillon was jealous. Finally, when Bouvard comes upon the sleeping figures of the child Victorine and the deformed Romiche whose face is contorted in a spasm of pleasure, the splinters of the shattered oat chest tell him nothing of the nature of sexual desire (n, 299). The common factor in these appearances is a joke about immaculate conceptions: after the oats fed to hens at Faverges's farm, Bouvard and Pecuchet give their animals enemas and purges, and the 'consequences' are serious disturbances, the first of which is that the girl who looks after the poultry on their farm becomes pregnant (n, 210). Varro, whose agricultural calendar was based on that of Mago of Carthage, believed that both Lusitanian mares and pullets were capable of being fertilised by the wind on the model of the hypenemia or 'wind eggs' which pullets lay (Tilly, 238). Since the Creation is attributed to the laying of a wind egg in the version of the Orphic mysteries presented in Aristophanes' Birds (OCD, 759), Flaubert borrows his joke from the Ancients' satire. The source of Pecuchet's fructus belli is the source of Varro's agricultural lore: Carthage (11, 261). The subject of less-than-immaculate conceptions is not irrelevant to the names from which Melie's derives. Yonge describes Amal as 'a remarkable word' (CY, 329) for its universality in association with work, but the Sanskrit also carried the mutually opposite meanings of 'spotless' and 'a repetition of marks, stroke upon stroke'. Melie's name is therefore the point of intersection of writing and a cluster of scurrilous sexual jokes
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based on Flaubert's analysis of the vanity of male sexuality. Dr Vaucorbeil's diagnosis of the oatfield is twofold: the coppercoloured spots on Pecuchet's forehead are syphilitic sores and the source of his fits is self-hypnosis through the shiny peak of his casquette.
The portable property of Pecuchet's name finally becomes not the cave a liqueurs transported to Chavignolles but the legacy of the cave episode which began with a counting of bottles. What Pecuchet carries to the grave with him is the syphilides. The two cloportes who were born with the Revolutionary calendar have been influenced by the military legacy of Bonapartism, and the sharing of Melie's favours is attributed to the vanity of an enhanced image of the self reflected by one's own military adornment. 'Melie' is a code-word for the most important women in Flaubert's life. Louise Colet's nickname, Melusine, based on her birthplace, Aix-en-Provence, was applied to her poetry by Flaubert, who found it beautiful only 'jusqu'a une certaine place' (Frejlich, 22). The connection between the fictional relationships of'real life' and the real relationships of fiction is present at Emma Rouault's death, when the reflection of a suffering face in a mirror joins 'cet affreux gout d'encre' to indicate that the pain conveyed through fiction and the pain experienced through our fictional links with others is the same emotion. Both are the result of the play of reflections emanating from the self. Whether Gustave Flaubert engendered Adolphe Schlesinger or not, the sense of having done so is part of his creative imagination, and the depucelage in the cellar which is Chavignolles indicates that biological and unconscious truth are one: the resemblance between Thursday 1 April 1841 and Thursday 1 April 1852 (n, 261) is striking, and all the more so since the date of Pecuchet's depucelage has to be 'teased out' of Flaubert's temporal clues by reference to the calendar. The vanity of Pecuchet's desire is indicated by his witnessing, from a fosse, of the encounter between Gorju and Mme Castillon which aroused his own desire to emulate Gorju, to become his mirror image (11, 259—60). The geographical metaphor of the hollow/
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depression present in the name Chavignolles was announced on the first day there, when Bouvard was depressed by hearing his land denigrated by Gouy, and walked home 'par la cavee' which was the physical equivalent of the attenuated pleasure Bouvard felt 'a marcher dessus' (11, 208). The individual's notions of what is desirable are based on the Other's desire. When the residual desire between Bouvard and Mme Bordin is translated into the sexual intercourse between a peacock and a peahen on Friday 1 April 1864 (11, 294), the image conveys the instinctive vanity of the rut for all creatures. Pecuchet's seduction of Melie is a product of sexual jealousy arising from a self-comparison with Gorju. His deliberate denigration and expulsion of Germaine, a faithful servant who was there from the beginning of the time at Chavignolles, is the prerequisite for this initiation. Since all variations, for Flaubert, are merely substitutions for an original which is unattainable, all are equally invalid, so the special pleading of the grand passion is in vain. The wings of the peacock surround the peahen he is mounting 'comme un berceau' (n, 294), and the washing which enfolded Bouvard and Mme Bordin 'come les rideaux d'un lit' (n, 293) is dragged along the ground by Gouy's 'Bougre de rosse!' (11, 294), frightened by the sexual shenanigans. Gouy's cruelty to his old 'rosse' on the grounds that it is his property reflects the status of the object when desire has passed, and the lesson Pecuchet tries to teach Victor and Victorine on the day of the peafowl and horse is an ethical one: a good boy, Adolphe, kisses his mother, studies his German, looks after a blind man and is received into the Ecole Polytechnique. The bad boy, Eugene, begins by disobeying his father, gets into a quarrel in a cafe, beats his wife, falls down dead drunk, smashing a cupboard in the process, and winds up in jail where he becomes an example for other little boys (n, 294). These two names applied to Adolphe reflect anguish about the ethics of having engendered him, since the broken cupboard is a substitution for the oat chest which was splintered through the stable boy's jealousy and smashed to smithereens at the time of Mme Castillon's interruption of the hay-loft rendezvous
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between Melie and Gorju. It was at this time, on their return from researching the Due d'Angouleme's life, that Bouvard questioned the validity of their enterprise but did not seek to solve the mystery under his own roof. The visions of Victorine in the arms of Romiche behind the debris of the Renaissance chest which was an oat container (n, 299) and of Victor's boiled cat (n, 295) shock the proxy parents, who fail to see the irony in the fact that they did not seek answers to the destruction of the chest which came as part of a parcel containing Melie and Gorju. Furthermore, their torturing of animals in the name of science was just as cruel: the yellow-haired dog they planned to inject with phosphorus and shut up in the cellar to see if his nostrils would breathe fire (11, 222) becomes a repressed memory whose return produces a temptation to suicide (11, 275), and the cats drowned through immersion in water for five minutes (11, 222) are no less cruelly treated than Victor's boiled cat. Germaine's warning that the dog might become rabid and return is a piece of psychoanalysis whose prophetic value is realised, not only by the vision of the decomposing dog's corpse which depresses Bouvard and Pecuchet, but also by the vision of the inflamed carrelet in the cellar of Germaine's alcoholic delusions (n, 268). The tragi-comic joke about oats, based as it is on a food common to the mares and pullets to whom the power of immaculate conception is attributed, has its last great stand in the field of ripe oats (11, 275) where the dog's corpse suggests to Pecuchet a self-comparison: 'a la place du ventre, e'etait un amas de couleur terreuse' produces 'Nous serons un jour comme ga!' The diagnosis of Pecuchet's syphilis in a field of oats whose ripening has finally come is a prolepsis of this final outcome of Pecuchet's 'maculate' conception. But his 'teint un peu jaune' (n, 224) antedates the initiation in the cellar by a long time, and indicates that it is the psychological factors in Pecuchet's makeup which have brought the bodily putrefaction anticipated in the image of the dog. Voragine describes Pecuchet's suspected 'maladie de foie' (n, 224) when he describes homicidal jealousy as a 'pain in the liver' (p. 212). Both of Flaubert's protagonists are consumed by
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sexual curiosity, but Pecuchet's is closer to sadism than Bouvard's because it has been more repressed. What Melie represents by the end of BeP is the Mother of the Mother Country, a concept denied in the concept of la patrie and in the heroes' total lack of curiosity about their own mothers. Bouvard's life is dominated by the increasingly mouldy portrait of the pere naturel who represents a legacy never properly acknowledged in his life: he never mentions his mother, any more than does Pecuchet whose mother died when he was very young. Since the only personal role allowed to women in their intimate lives is that of servant, the names of the servants express this absence of a Mother Country. Reine is the cure's servant, Marianne is Mme Bordin's and Germaine is the on-again, off-again servant of Bouvard and Pecuchet, in tandem and/or in alternation with Melie. The Monarchy, the Republic and the Militaristic Empire are encapsulated in these names, but Melie is something more again. As an orphaned and abandoned product of an eastern/ western home who first enters the novel as a ragged child earmarked for the role of sacrificial victim at a harvest festival, Melie incarnates the patrie as fertile yet poisoned soil, endlessly laboured and labouring, productive of soothing drinks and abominable cuisine, endowed with a shady past but ever eager to take her opportunities where she finds them. Melie's pregnancy would have been even longer than Rosanette's if the story had charted its course, for Melie's syphilitic offspring is twentieth-century France. While Reine's influence on the bachelors' establishment is productive of order, Marianne's alliance with the Widow across the way is productive of an efficiency and dynamism which by the end of the story have taken over Bouvard's estate in all but name; and it is then that the two ailing old remnants transfer their attentions to the Croix d'Or where Melie continues her combination of labour and succour by dispensing drinks from behind the bar. The superannuated remnants have no role left to perform, except death, in order that reality may coincide with appearances, so the retreat into the image of a nostalgic military glory is an appropriate end to the Second Empire.
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Flaubert's saving up of one of his oldest jokes, the Fete de la Merde in the Hotel des Farces, for 2g June 1861 is his final version of the end of the Hundred Days. The presence of Guy de Maupassant as the abbe Pruneau (11, 280) is Gustave's last gasp of hope for the culture he is leaving behind. As to the paternity of Melie's child, Gorju would seem to be the front runner, for he is the spirit of an opportunism that never really manages to seize the main chance, but is doomed to be wounded and mutilated repeatedly by backing the wrong horse. Gorju's 'fameux coup de chien' of the June Days of 1848 was an even worse bet than the Algerian War, but even when he is on the winning side, Gorju seems to come out a loser, for all his cynical opportunism. Melie is something of a 'hold-all' name, for it also suggests a derivation from the Greek/Latin for 'black': the name might just as well be an abbreviation for Melanie or Melaina, and Flaubert's maid in Paris at the time of his departure for Carthage was named Melanie (11, 705). In Un Coeur simple, the name Aubain suggests that the family comes from elsewhere than Pont-1'Eveque, and that alibi/elsewhere is Saint-Melaine (11, 166), the home of Mme Aubain's ancestors and of Mere Simon. Melaine was the first bishop of Rouen, and his feast day is 22 October (Delaney, 376), the official birthday of the Due de Morny (RP, 6) who ruined Gustave's Mother Country. For Flaubert, however, the name is more interesting in its feminine form: the two Melainas share a title of Demeter the Black (CY, 70), and these saints were a grandmother and granddaughter who did not always get along together but who served the scholarly St Jerome faithfully, with the result that their names are immortalised in his writings (Attwater, 242). The biographical parallels to Flaubert's life are profound: a grandmother and granddaughter who bear the same name (Caroline/Melaina) serve a scholarly bachelor, and both are of a disputatious disposition. Melaina is a title of Demeter as the wintry earth grieving for her lost daughter Chloe, the green, the verdant one, hence a synonym of Virginie (CY, 70, 153), and the feast days allocated to
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St Jerome's two Melainas suggest that they are a Christian syncretism of the Demeter-Core figure: the Elder is celebrated on 8 June and the Younger on 31 December (Attwater, 242). Voragine seems to see a relationship between the names Sylvester and Melaina in the fact that they share 31 December as a feast: in discussing the symbolism of Sylvester's name, he inserts elements borrowed from Melaina/Chloe's name: Sylvester is the light of the earth where earth is defined as the church, black in humility, sweet in piety. Or, Sylvester is from silva, forest, and trahens, attracting, because he attracted the men of the forest. Or, 'Sylvester means the green one, the countryman, the shadowy one, the sylvan one' (p. 72). If Melaina the Younger belongs to the last day of the year, she has something in common with Voragine's Felicity, celebrated on 2g November as the last saint in the calendar which begins with Andrew on 30 November and ends with Felicity on 29 November (ibid., 7, 735). Demeter the black and sorrowing earth grieving for her lost verdant daughter has a place in Un Coeur simple through Mme Aubain's mourning of her daughter Virginie. Ovid defines Vesta as none other than earth (Fasti, 353), so the fact that time is measured in the Aubain household by a clock in the shape of a temple of Vesta (11, 166) makes the claims of time those of earth. What the earth gives she reclaims, and Felicite's death occurs on Sunday 8 June in a year which exists outside time but at the beginning of the Vestalia. Through her choice of a nom de plume, George Sand becomes Earth (Voragine, 232), and her death on 8 June i8y6 coincides with the Vestalia (AF, 181). The dead were called 'Demeter's people' in Greece, and the Ancients defined Demeter's name as Earth Mother, so Demeter joins Vesta as a personification of Earth, mother of all hero(in)es (OCD, 324). In a year in which Easter fell on 6 April, the date of Flaubert's mother's death in 1872, the Fete-Dieu would fall on 8 June, so the timing of Felicite's death in the presence of la Mere Simon from Saint-Melaine associates the deaths of Gustave's two mothers on a date belonging to the grandmother, Melaina the Elder. The mother of the Lares is the incarnation of the family's origins, and Emilie Renaud in ESi is presented in this light.
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Dame Hermeline is the wife of Maitre Renart in the Roman de Renart, and Emilie is the wife of Maitre Renaud, the cbon conseilleur' whose chestnut hair is doubled through that of the 'perruche rouge' on the Quai du Louvre (1, 279). The medieval Dame Hermeline was understood as either the ermine, the belette or the martre (Cle7i, 328), and the qualities for which the weasel is noted in the bestiaries are her ability to kill the otherwise invulnerable basilisk or regulus, the ability to conceive through the mouth and give birth through the ear or vice versa, the talent for receiving the divine word and then hiding what she has heard - and the ability to hide her young in different places to save them from predators (McCulloch, 186). When 'Fox' returns to haunt Jules, he/she is described as a composite creature: the lethal basilisk stare belongs to a dog/ wolf/renard who is also an ermine, for the Fox with a white spot on his black coat (1, 310) becomes a white creature with a black spot (1, 352) and a name which invokes the young ermine's red fur. The purity of the ermine's 'fourrure immaculee' has made it a symbol of justice and pure intentions, but the contrast of its white-furred purity with its 'regard de cruaute' has made it a symbol of 'la perte du pucelage' (CI671, 205). Emilie is also associated with the wearing of white dresses in winter and the patch of white in her black hair (indicating where it is beginning to fall out), as is Mme Castillon in BeP (11, 260). Whereas the swan is a positively valorised white which hides a negative black, Emilie's hair is the negative correlative of the swansdown boa and swanskin gloves worn by her friend Aglae, whose biography is a potted version of Emma Bovary's and Delphine Delamare's (1, 285, 301, 371). Swans appear as Henry waits in vain in the Tuileries Gardens on 12/22 February 184.0, and the swan is the symbol of husbands whose wives are giving birth and who perform the couvade (0671, 150). What the white-on-black and its 'negative' image betoken in the context of the immaculate/spotted contradiction in the name Emilie is the area of indeterminacy available to the writer who fills a blank page with black. Just as the narration of Novembre makes it impossible to say whether both visits to the prostitute are mental masturbation or not, so
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the pregnancy in ESi indicated by Emilie's wearing of smocks and other loose clothing (1, 282, 285, 292, 297, 312) is both suggested and denied by Henry's mal de mer, part of a gender reversal which began on the eve of departure with a swapping of clothes. Emilie's character is subject to the same indeterminacy: whether her later curiosity about the relationship between Henry and Jules means that she has stolen the key to his locked correspondence case and read Jules's letters is left as a question which is posed by the contradiction over the impossible key on the mantelpiece, but never answered. Similarly, 'Fox' is both the basilisk and the ermine/weasel that is its own opposite, the incarnation of irreconcilable opposites which can exist only in the imagination or on the page. The narrator's own self-contradictions indicate that the problem exists within the self as well: how can we hope to penetrate the possible duplicity of others when we are often unaware of our own? FLAUBERT/SOPHOGLE(S)
Ton meurt presque toujours dans l'incertitude de son nom, a moins d'etre un sot. C11,114 Flaubert or Flobert comes from Frobert, the name of a saint popular in the area around Troyes (G-G, 203). Yonge gives 'Frodhr, wise or learned' (CY, 425) as the first syllable of Flobert, while Lebel derives the name from 'Hlodo-berf (p. 56) as does Dauzat, who derives 'Hlodo-berhtd* from 'frod, prudent, sage' (Dauzat56, 139). The second element of Flaubert is 'berht, brillant' (ibid., 29). Yonge renders Flobert as 'wise splendour' (p. 425) and Long gives 'famous for wisdom' in a definition which equates Frodobert and Flobert (CY, 38). Flaubert is the Germanic equivalent of the Greek Sophocles, and in ESi Sophocles is the basic text for the aspiring writer Jules. While Homer and Shakespeare are the twin gods of Jules's poetic Heaven, Sophocles is the fount and source of all (1, 367). The creator of the Theban trilogy has influenced the Oedipal encounters in Flaubert, as King Oedipus shows. At the 'place where three roads join', Laius attacks his
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unrecognised son's head with a 'two-pronged goad' from his superior position in a horse-drawn carriage, and Oedipus' angry response results in the killing of his father through a blow from his staff. With this same weapon, Oedipus also kills the carriage driver who thrust him aside (Theban Plays, 48). Gustave looked in vain for 'le chemin fourchu d'Oedipe' when he was in Greece (11, 656, 669), and this episode from Sophocles' masterpiece is the basis of a repeated scene in Flaubert's fictions. In Un Parfum a sentir, Marguerite's face is whipped by Isabellada's coachman as the lame, redheaded and toothless Marguerite tries to hold on to the coach (1, 66). Marguerite's son, Ernesto, tries to perform as a danseur de corde while frightened of Pedrillo's stare and whip, and the father's wounding of the son is described in language which is repeated at the time of Cosme de Medicis' punishment of his son Garcia in La Peste a Florence: 'Quelque chose siffla dans Fair' (1, 78); 'quelque chose qui sifflait dans Pair' (1, 56). When Henry, who has already accomplished Oedipus' revenge by stealing Renaud's wife, visits a final humiliation on the old man whose greying auburn hair is a later version of his own in ESi, the image is repeated: 'un coup de canne, sifflant dans l'air ... descend sur son chapeau et le lui coupe en deux moities' (1, 348). Renaud wants his wife to believe that he has been knocked down by a carriage (1,349). Although Henry's weapon is the dandy's cane, the slashing instrument is usually a whip, reflecting the name Fouet of Flaubert's maternal ancestors; but whatever the weapon, the head, face or cheek is usually the part of the body which is attacked. The Norman general Bernard slashes the already scarred face of Arnould in Chronique normand (1, 69); Charles de Bourgogne strikes the brasseur's head with his ebony stick in Lqys XI and his victim promises revenge 'au detour d'un carrefour' (1, 126). A similar image appears in Salammbo when the aged Giscon strikes Autharite's head with his ivory stick (1, 696). Brother Bernardo's obsession with the prior's sexuality symbolised by his ring finally produces the son's 'crane ... horriblement mutile' in Le Moine des Chartreux (1, 47). Berthe Bovary's lip (jVF, 306) or cheek (1, 613) is slashed when her
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mother thrusts her aside, and the coachman Hivert whips the Blind Man's already mutilated face in MB (1, 665). Felicite's right cheek bleeds from the head-to-waist whiplash of the mail coach driver in Un Coeur simple, and here the paternal proscription appears through Felicite's refusal to trust the diligence with the dead body of her son/lover Loulou (11, 175). In Mort du due de Guise, Henri III kicks and spits in the face of the rival whose assassination he has ordered (1, 44), but the dead, staring eyes from 'cette terrible et male figure' make the childlike Henri III tremble in the presence of Henri de Guise's corpse (1, 45). This threatening gaze from the dead father's eyes intimidates Garcia as he looks at the blood on the cheek of the elder brother Francois whom he has killed through Oedipal jealousy (1, 78). When Aulus Vitellius in Herodias gazes on the slashed face of the prophet (n, 198), a similar image from ESn is repeated: Dambreuse's eyes reopen after he is dead to stare at Frederic with a reproachful continuity which seems judgmental (n, 145). It is a facial feature, Timpression d'une barbe', which provokes Julien's parricidal rage in Saint Julien VHospitalier, and the dead eyes of the father burn him like fire (n, 185). Iaokanann's eyes are closed in death when the tetrarch gazes at the clotted blood and slashed jaw, but open again when the future emperor, Vitellius, gazes on the head (n, 199). Gustave Flaubert had a facial scar which dated from childhood. Sophocles' home country was the white Colonus where Oedipus' apotheosis occurs, but the setting of most of the Oedipus legend is the city: In Thebes, City of Light, from the Pythian House of Gold The gracious voice of heaven is heard. Theban Plays, 30 Paris, la ville lumiere, contains within itself another city of light, the Luxembourg (Long, 13), and another Maison d'Or, where a farcical duel between two mirror images, Alfred and Frederic, is caused by a plate aimed at the head but which hits the stomach instead (n, 89). The Luxembourg is the setting of the duel between Henry and M. Renaud in ESi (1, 348), so the
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father-son conflict whose clearest expression and most enduring literary form date from the events on the road to Delphi, the Pythian House of Gold, is associated with Sophocles' chemin fourchu.
The Luxembourg gardens are the place of recreation for the young men who come to Paris for their studies, and Leon Dupuis (i, 652), the first narrator of Novembre (1, 274), Henry Gosselin (1, 279), Martinon (n, 16), Deslauriers (n, 104) Hussonnet and Frederic Moreau (n, 19) are just some of Flaubert's characters who, like himself, haunt this mythical site imbued with the heroic legacy of the first Empire. As Binet explains to Leon: 'quand on n'a pas servi comme militaire, Monsieur Leon, on n'est pas un homme' (NV, 311). The twenty-six marshals created by Napoleon are the basis of Balzac's Treize, invoked by Deslauriers when he speaks of a phalange he would like to activate (n, 64) as an instrument of his own will. Dussardier invokes a similar idea when he claims that a dozen determined men could free Senecal from legal custody, and the place for this rescue is the Luxembourg (11, 93). The duel between Frederic and Cisy gives an indication of why the band of brothers can never be activitated beyond the space of male fantasy: it is the mention of Cisy's pari at the Champ de Mars which wounds Frederic 'comme la sensation d'un coup de fouet' (n, 88). Paris as the place of pans is what injures Frederic on the anniversary of Napoleon's revival of the Legion d'Honneur and the marshalate, for Cisy is incapable of wielding the blade which is also a 'cravache' beyond the act of nicking his own thumb in a hilarious depucelage caused by a terrified fainting fit (11, 92). The Oedipal jealousy between the members of the fantasy brotherhood dreamed of by the young men in £$11 is what prevents the phalanx from being activated, for each young man is simultaneously a father and a son, a master and a slave. When Dussardier fights on the side of the workers on 24 February 1848, he receives Oedipus' wound of the slashed cheek (11, 114); when he fights on the side of the Father on a 24 June 1848 which Flaubert's chronological system makes the equivalent of the 24 February date, his thigh is wounded (11, 130). The man in the
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superior position is the father who slashes the cheek of the son in the inferior position, so the son's retaliation must aim at a lower part of the father's body. However, when the son's weapon is the pen, the father's head is more accessible, and the name Les Bertaux for Theodore Rouault's farm is an example of what Baudouin (p. 971) calls c Un symbole tres comprehensible de la mutiliation du pere': Vest la suppression de l'initiale du nom propre'. Bertaux is from Berto-aldi (AL, 228), the second syllable deriving from the Germanic -wald, the 'forest' which came to mean 'power' or 'rule' (Dauzat63, 30). The farm's name is a combination of the tail ends of Flaubert and Foucault, Elisa's name; and Emma's surname, Rouault, combines the first syllable of Rodolphe/Flaubert with the second of Foucault. Yonville-PAbbaye cuts the father's tail as well: the place of the father which forms the second component of the name has disappeared without trace, and the Lord himself has been sent packing for defalcation: Yanoda-Adonay has absconded leaving a space vacant for the Charles Bovary whose name combines manhood and fatherhood (1, 597). Since the deus absconditus has withdrawn authorisation from the world of signs, Yonville is a place where the signs have become mixed up (1, 598). As the place of the Y, it is the 'chemin fourchu' of Oedipus, the place of the son's humiliation and revenge. Cremanville, Aulnees and Croixmare are the self-appropriated
titles of distinction of Gustave's maternal forebears (G-G, 11), and they appear in ESn through the name game which associates the fiction-maker's act of rechristening biographical prototypes with the self-appropriated titles of the illegitimate offspring of the great. Gilbert des Aulnays, the godfather of Frederic's mirror image (11, 87), bears the name used in an early scenario for an incestuous family (Bruneau, 144). Talleyrand's son, Eugene Delacroix, is associated with the peacock/turkey Auguste Delamare through the actor's choice of the classical costume of 'Dante' for the masked ball (11, 52) - though the costume, as described by the narrator, belongs to Virgil, not Dante, in Delacroix's painting of the two great writers which was begun in the year of Gustave's birth. The writer who is the
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'Cygne de Mantoue' according to the Dictionnaire des idees regues (n, 306) is associated with the painter who is rechristened as the Swan of Rouen by Flaubert's chef-d'oeuvre beginning with a Cygne-Delacroix (11, 12).
In Le Sexefaible, Gremonville is the name of a father who lives in self-imposed isolation in Toulouse because of the birth of a redheaded daughter, Therese, whose paternity he denies. The elder daughter, Valentine, is the signal that the basis of this situation is the marriage of Louis and Hortense Bonaparte, for Toulouse was the place of Louis's self-imposed exile before the wedding at Saint-Cloud in 1807 which saw the conception of Napoleon III (DD, 5), and Valentine is the Delessert through whom Flaubert learned the secrets of the Bonaparte/Beauharnais family (D47, 366). The diplomat Paul de Gremonville who is the reflection/ echo of Dambreuse/Delessert is also equated with the Young Turk who is a banker's son in ESn. He bears the name of Gustave's godfather, Paul Le Poittevin, as does Paul de Monville in Quidquid volueris.
Paul's sponsorship of an experimental union between a negress and an orang-outang produces Djalioh, and this hybrid creature who is a Rose also has a mirror relationship with the swan. Djalioh's name combines roses and water, and as he rows the skiff containing his foster mother through the pond which is also an Achilles-river, Djalioh watches roses and swans, symbols of a beauty denied to the ugly duckling. Beneath the swan's whiteness is a black skin which makes these beautiful creatures sinister (CI671, 150), but what lies beneath Djalioh's black, hairy skin remains a mystery. His flight from a brothel carrying a rose and a mirror shows that he is aware of the role of vanity in the sexual act and the act of engendering: Paul de Monville obtains the cross of the Legion d'Honneur at the age of twenty for his sadistic act of vicarious self-perpetuation (1, 108). In Un Coeur simple, the Marquis de Gremanville is the greatuncle of a Paul Aubain who promises to turn out just as badly as the alcoholic old remnant with the filthy poodle (n, 167); and in Le Chateau des coeurs, Alfred de Cisy uses the bait of an
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invitation to his aunt, the Comtesse de Tremanville, as a means of seducing Ernestine Kloekher (11, 360). In BeP, the Croixmare family tree hangs behind the door at Chavignolles as a correlative to the portrait of Bouvard's father and the pastel portrait of the lady in Louis XV costume (n, 233). It is the notary, Marescot, who takes an interest in the 'arbre genealogique' (n, 234-5), indicating an interest in its genuineness and the reason, never explained, for its relevance to the present owners. ESn provides the answer to that riddle: the Paul de Gremonville, Auguste Delamare, Eugene Delamare and Eugene Delacroix who form the basis of the web emanating from the name Croixmare as 'mare de la croix' (Dauzat63, 147) are all enmeshed in the narcissism inevitably contained in the act of creation. To pretend that the mirror is held up to 'life', thereby eliminating the creator, is just another joke. The illegitimate offspring of the powerful have the same need for self-illustration as the artist who spends his time in a world of reflections and echoes. Cygne de la Croix,finally,is the sign of an Oedipal brotherhood whose wings are capable of breaking the paternal thigh according to the Dictionnaire des idees regues (11, 366) and who belong to the secret society which is the ultimate creative mystery of the inn sign (CI671, 150). Although the writer spends his time superimposing black on white in the course of his occupation, the act of 'whitewashing5 is not entirely foreign to him. ROSE/HORTENSE
Marie-Josephe-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie was born in Martinique on 23 June 1763 and died at Malmaison on 29 May 1814. Like the prostitute Marie in Novembre (1, 260), the Josephine of popular myth was known by a different name at home, and that name was Rose. Her daughter, Hortense-Eugenie de Beauharnais, was born of disputed paternity in Martinique on 10 April 1783 (Wilson, 3, 23), so both women were Creoles. At the time ofJosephine de Beauharnais's civil marriage to Napolione
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Buonaparte on ig Ventose An IV, two substitutions were made: the bride gave her year of birth as 1767 in order to achieve the 'eternally feminine' age of twenty-nine, and the bridegroom gave 5 January 1768 in place of the real 15 August ij6g (Aretz, 91). With those two substitutions, the great Beauharnais-Bonaparte wrangle began. The subject of the Rose who produced Hortense the Gardener (Long, 233) is clearly one related to anomalies in the unfolding of time. The rumours which attributed paternity of Hortense Bonaparte's three legitimate sons to her stepfather and brother-inlaw, Napoleon Bonaparte, were encouraged by the Emperor, according to Hortense's memoirs (Wilson, 161-2), and their implications are enormous for the second generation of the imperial family which ruled France during the Second Empire. Whether or not the Emperor engendered the three boys he sponsored as godfather and endowed with his own name, the fact that he encouraged the notion that he was part of an incestuous menage a trois contradicts the prudish set of standards the Emperor imposed on his court and creates a confusion of binary oppositions basic to the sense of discrete identity. The disruption in time encoded in the names of the Rose and the Gardener becomes a salient feature of an incestuous imperial family which is the nation's family, for according to Flaubert society models itself on the Emperor (1, 219). The problem of incest haunts the legitimacy of all beginnings (1, 244), since origins imply a moment when there was no distinction between before and after. If the four-term homology parent:child::before:qfter no longer seems to operate, all classifications seem to be threatened. This problem is tackled in ESu through the figure of a Hortense Baslin who becomes a Rose-Annette Bron, a Rosanette, a Poulette and a Marechale, and the relationship between these appellations is indicated by etymology. The name Rose is derived from hros, 'horse or fame' (CY, 204), as is the title Marechale, the servant of the horse. That Hortense Baslin is a figure of the former Queen Hortense of Holland and mother of Napoleon III is indicated in her surname: Hortense is the little queen (D&R, 48). Basile's ironic comment applied to Une
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Poulette entre trois cocos (11, 93) indicates another identification, for both horses and pullets are capable, like the Virgin, of being impregnated by the wind (Tilly, 238). Frederic Baslin is a 'wind egg', son of a mare or pullet and the product of a hieros gamos between an unknown deity and the Baslinna of the CroixRousse (OCD, 651). Frederic Moreau's nightmare after the ball reveals that adultery and incest are at the origins of language as well. 'Philology' is an apt name for an investigation into the genealogy of language, for it reveals adoptions based on superficial resemblances and products from the wrong side of the sheets passed off as legitimate heirs, while true scions are consigned to oblivion by being swallowed up into a foreign group. The Rose is a rosse is a hros, and a cachemire is a cauchemar is a Marechalel
Marie-chdle. The textile/textual component of Frederic's nightmare is related to the cachemire both as authorial game of cachecache, and as the doubling of the 'confectionneuse de lingerie' who was the young Hortense de Beauharnais (Corley, 3) and the young Hortense Baslin, both of whom gained much more impressive titles through the course of a lifetime. Frederic first glimpses the Hortense who has just become Rose-Annette at the Palais-Royal Theatre on 11 June 1841, the night of Arnoux's black armband for Waterloo and a false inheritance created by the propaganda machine of Bonapartism (ibid., 9). From the beginning, royalty and theatricality are associated with the Hortense/Rose figure. Frederic is first introduced to 'Mile Rose-Annette Bron, la maitresse du lieu' (11, 49), on 10/20 December 1846, dates which anticipate Louis Napoleon's election and swearing-in as president of the Republic on 10 and 20 December 1848 by two years. Situating a masked ball on the dates of an election which was really an inheritance, and of a false oath to defend the Republic, is a way of designating the election, the oath and the entire Second Empire as one great big charade. Frederic's inheritance of 2/12 December 1843 *s further indication of the illegitimacy of the legacy, as it coincides with the anniversaries of the first Napoleon's coronation and of 'le soleil d'Austerlitz' in which the decorated Homais basks (NV, 127), while antici-
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pating the coup d'etat of 2 December 1851 and the establishment of the Second Empire on 2 December 1852. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was born prematurely on 20 April 1808 after a pregnancy which Hortense Bonaparte's physicians certified was of eight months' duration. This places the conception date at somewhere around 20 August 1807, at the time of the gathering of the Bonaparte-Beauharnais clan at Saint-Cloud for the wedding of King Jerome. Hortense's and Napoleon's movements have been carefully documented for the period in question. On 12 August 1807, Louis and Hortense left Toulouse for Saint-Cloud. Napoleon was at Saint-Cloud from 27 July until the wedding on 22-3 August, except when he opened the sittings of the Corps Legislatif on 16 August i8oy (DD, 5). Flaubert
plays particularly on the dates ij and 20 August as the probable times of the incestuous conception, but the important thing here is not the question whether the event ever took place, but the fact that it was conceivable. In MB, a hilarious version of the imaginary engendering of the second Emperor by the first follows a reference to the decapitation of Louis XVI by a suisse whose presence indicates that the 10/10 August of the jiacre episode combines the massacre of the Swiss Guard and the end of monarchy on 10 August ijg2 with the conception at Saint-Cloud on 20 August 180J. Rosanette's broken umbrella in the context of a clandestine rendezvous in the marital home of Jacques Arnoux on 10/20 August 184.2 (11, 31) points to the illegitimate and incestuous aspects of Bonapartist sexuality and power on a date which combines the end of monarchy with the sowing of the seeds of a new generation of Napoleonic rule. The imperial family was one which seemed to be extremely insecure about the question of paternity. Almost all of the children of Josephine and Hortense were born of disputed paternity, and the chastity of Letizia Buonaparte was not exempt from this rule, since the paternity of Louis Bonaparte, father of Napoleon III, was attributed to Louis Marbeuf, the godfather (NY, 94). The narration of ESn seems to put that rumour to rest at the moment of Frederic's brief meeting with Marie Arnoux on 2 September 1847 in the context of the first
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Emperor's capote and of the Napoleonic floral emblem, for 2 September IJJ8 was the date of Louis Bonaparte's birth (Kemble, 16). However, the birth (according to the plans) of the illegitimate Frederic Baslin behind a 'porte batarde' in a Rue Marbeuf nursing home full of country girls, almost all of whom have been impregnated by their uncles or their fathers (de Biasi, 414), shows that the meeting with Marie was the most short-lived of truces between Flaubert and the Second Empire. Rosanette/Hortense's introduction into the novel on the anniversary of Louis Napoleon's bogus legacy from Napoleon I is followed by her participation in a scene primitive on the anniversary of his 'conception'. This, in turn, is followed by her wounding of Marie Arnoux at the place of Louis Napoleon's conception at Saint-Cloud, on a date which, five years later and on the same day of the week, Saturday 24 June, coincides with her presence at Louis Napoleon's place of baptism, Fontainebleau. Rose-Annette appears as a 'dragon' at her masked ball in 1846, and this disguise is a cachemire: it conceals/reveals the mother/daughter who shared the names Beauharnais and Bonaparte. The dragon kills with its tail according to the bestiaries (McCulloch, 112), and Rose-Annette's golden spurs threaten Frederic as he watches her dance, later becoming the weapon by which he is disembowelled in the dream which is really a cauchemar. a 'spur-horse' which doubles the 'horseservant' in Marechale. Rose-Annette's spur, which is also the thorn of the Rose who wears a green culotte, is the weapon which wounded Marie at Saint-Cloud as well, and its summoning of Arnoux to a rendezvous of 25 May 1843 creates a prolepsis of Louis Napoleon's escape from Ham on 25 May 1846 (DD, 46), after he was refused permission to visit his dying father, Louis Bonaparte. When Rosanette expels the old woman in black on a 13 January 1847 which is also a 23 June 1846, the daughter's rejection of a grieving mother occurs on Josephine's birthday. The dating of the ball at 20-1 February is established by Flaubert's note: 'repart pour Paris en fevrier' (G-M, 15). Frederic's absence in Le Havre from 18-20 February/December is the occasion of another
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period of 'lost' time caused by the calendar change of ig February/1 March 1700, so his return of 20 February/December 1846
is also 2 March. Moreover, the / / / / March 1583 calendar change in Groningen makes Frederic's return occur also on 12 March 1846. It follows that the masked ball coincides both with the dates of Gustave Flaubert's 'double conception' and with the elopement of Henry and Emilie in 1841 in ESi (1, 331, 336): the summons from Captain Nicole of the Aimable-Constance on 12 March produces a departure from Paris by the night coach of 13 March 1841. As 20-1 June, the ball is also the time of conception of the King of Rome and of Frederic Baslin, as well as being the nuit de Varennes which made Alexandre de Beauharnais ruler of France through his position as president of the Assembly. Hortense and Eugene were hailed as Dauphine and Dauphin at that time in 1792, so a Carib woman's prophecy that Josephine would be queen of France seemed close to being fulfilled (RMW, 42). Rosanette also gains a title on this fateful night. Rosanette becomes 'la Marechale' on a 20-1 June which is also a 20-1 February, the date of the first portrait sitting in 1847 and of the suppression of the marshalate on 21 February iygj (PY, 17). However, the dispute she calms and which gains her the title has a basis in history. On 21 May i8og, five years and two days after Napoleon's investiture of the original eighteen marshals, three marshals of France were involved in a dispute in Massena's camp: when Lannes accused Bessieres of parading about all day without charging home, Massena intervened to prevent a duel he described as the scandalous spectacle of two marshals drawing on each other in the presence of the enemy (PY, 60). Since the date is also 2-3 March, the averted duel occurs at the same time as the farcical duel between Louis Napoleon and Napoleon's illegitimate son Leon in London on 3 March 1840 (Con68, 292), and the conflict between mirror images of the Alfred-Frederic duel on 21 May 1847 is a reflection of that duel between two brothers. The notion of Empire is based on the family, and Lannes's quarrel with Bessieres on the day of the former's mortal wound at Essling was really about jealousy and rivalry for the Emperor's love: Bessieres was
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Murat's ally, and Lannes had lost out to Murat, whom he regarded as a circus performer, for the hand of Napoleon's sister Caroline. The duel between Frederic and Alfred de Cisy of 21 May 1847 follows a challenge issued on ig May 1847, the forty-third anniversary of the investiture of the first marshals and the fortyfifth anniversary of the creation of the Legion d'Honneur. The 21 May i8og quarrel at Essling was the day of Lannes's mortal wound which necessitated a leg amputation and led to his death on 31 May i8og, so the quarrel at the ball makes Lannes the Russian postilion and Bessieres/Murat the mediaeval knight (n, 53)Rosanette's statement that she is twenty-nine, made on 23 June 1848 at Fontainebleau, is the lie which cost Josephine her throne: by substituting 23 June IJ6J for the same date in 1763 at the time of her marriage to Napoleon (Aretz, 90), Josephine gave herself the 'eternally feminine' age of twenty-nine and the future Emperor the pretext for a divorce. Rosanette's account of her own 'defloration' on 23 June 1848 establishes further coincidences with the life of Queen Hortense. She claims it occurred three days after her fifteenth birthday at the Croix-Rousse in Lyon (11, 128). Rosanette's age of twenty-nine makes her a contemporary of Dussardier, who witnessed the blood-stained bayonets of the Rue Transnonain in 1834 at the age of fifteen (11, 93). 13-14 April 1834 was a bloody moment in French history, for it saw the coincidence of the suppression of the civil disturbances in Lyon and the beginning of disturbances in Paris. In revolutionary terminology, a bayonet is a Rosalie, so Dussardier's vision in the Rue Transnonain coincides with Hortense Baslin's defloration on the night of 13-14 April 1834, three days after the birthday she shares with Hortense, 10 April. Through the multiplication of time in 1848, 13—14 April becomes the moment of Frederic's second 'defloration' by Rosanette, and this reversal is anticipated by the prostitute Marie in JVovembre: 'c'est moi qui t'ai deflore' (1, 262); J'etais fake pour etre la maitresse d'un empereur' (1, 267). 14 April is la sainte-Lydwine, patron saint of syphilis (Nicolas, 148; Lasowski, 21), so the alternation of the
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names Rosanette and Rose-Annette for the character who was Hortense Baslin is based on the notion of the Republique as res publica, the public thing, property of all, like the 'fille publique' who poses as a statue of Liberty at the Tuileries. The 'grace' of the name Annette refers to the hidden costs of involvement with a woman who, like Josephine, is 'grace personified3 (Kemble, 88) or who, like Hortense, had 'a palm tree's grace' (Corley, 3). Arnoux's rose crown of the Rue de Fleurus is the same 'couronne de boutons roses' which adorns the foreheads of the syphilitic Pecuchet (n, 269), and of La Luxure and the Faunes who follow Pan in TSA (1, 466, 447, 517). The Baslinna of the Croix-Rousse is one of the possible sources of Arnoux' rosarium, the crown of copper-coloured skin eruptions which become the roseolae of venereal infection instead of the rosette of Napoleonic glory. The famous portrait of 'Mile Rose-Annette Bron, appartenant a M. Frederic Moreau, de Nogent' (n, 93) is associated with the 20 February 1847 of the first sitting, the 2 j June 1847 of its display and the 6 October 1847 of its purchase. Dussardier's persuasion of Frederic begins on the 5 October 1847 of his punch, and this is the tenth anniversary of Hortense Bonaparte's death (DD, 32). Rose-Annette carries a red velvet purse and is flanked by a peacock in the final version of Pellerin's portrait, but he had earlier thought of dressing her in 'une robe de soie rose' with a scarlet curtain as background, or in 'une robe de velours ponceau' with a staircase behind her (n, 62), as reflections of her 'attitude majestueuse' (11, 63). Ponceau is derived from paon, so the red of the dress/purse is a symbol of the masculine rivalry for the 'ruban ponceau' or rosette of the Legion d'Honneur, and the peacock which extends its beak over RoseAnnette's shoulder in its quest for the purse is a symbol of masculine vanity, as well as referring to the peacock as a symbol of the apotheosis of Roman Empresses. Peacocks' tails are also the substance of angels' wings, so they symbolise the angel as a thousand-eyed messenger; and the peacock's incorruptible flesh, which makes it a symbol of parthenogenesis (Rowland, 127—9), indicates that, where the imperial succession is concerned, paternity is always a mystery.
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The 6 October 1847 of Frederic's possession of the portrait is one of the two possible dates for the beginning of the Napoleon-Josephine liaison, on the eve of or the day after 13 vendemiaire 1795 (Castelot, 47), so the woman as source and object of power is conveyed in the emblems which surround the imperial woman who is also a Marechale. And the assumption of that title on a 21 February/May/December has further significance: 21 February 1793, as the interruption of the marshalate for the first time since 1047, indicates that Rosanette/Hortense is a false heroine who is invested 800 years after the establishment of the office; 21 May, as the anniversary of the Lannes-Bessieres duel, indicates the vanity and rivalry associated with the Napoleonic revival of the marshalate; and 21 December has a cryptic message as well. In Rome, it was the date of the Angeronalia, as is reflected in the anguish of Frederic's nightmare of the same date, and Angerona was a goddess who knew Rome's secret name, the fact that Roma was an anagram of Amor, understood by the ancients as Eros (Scullard, 209). If Rose is an anagram of this Eros, Marie is an anagram of Aimer, and the name which, for Frederic, contains 'des jonchees de roses' is also associated with the motif of the imperial woman through the suffering of Eugene Arnoux on 21-2 February 1848. 21 February 1824 *s the date of Eugene-Rose de Beauharnais' death (Bernhardy, 579), so Marie's saving of Eugene is an indication of the family solidarity of the Beauharnais clan and the perpetuity that that implies. Eugene is cured on 22 February, date of the Caristia, when family quarrels were settled after the respects to the dead were paid at the Feralia/Parentalia, and no outsiders were admitted (OCD, 205). In TSA, the Lares say that 'ils etaient doux, les repas de famille, surtout le lendemain des Feralia!' (1, 562), so this moment of reconciliation is part of the familial Imperial theme, especially since Frederic sees the portrait and Poulette article for the first time on another festival of the Lares on 27 June 1847 {Fasti, 381). There is a strange mixture of levity and tragedy in Flaubert's treatment of the subject of the Rose-Hortensia: the mysterious sound of scrambling on the coach and the vision of a woman in a doorway holding a light as 14 December becomes 15 December
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intimates that the expulsion of an anointed Empress of France is not a frivolous matter (n, 45). Whatever Rosanette's sins may be, she remains a sympathetic character until the end, when, like Josephine, she becomes enormously fat (11, 161; RMW, 268). Another sign of the relationship between Rosanette and Josephine/Hortense is the Russian Prince Tzernoukoff/Czernicheff: he represents both Alexander I and the Prince Czernicheff who was in Alexander's company at Saint-Leu on 14 May 1814 when both ought to have been attending the memorial service for Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette (Bernhardy, Eugene de Beauharnais, 459). It was at Alexander's urging that Hortense was made Duchesse de Saint-Leu in 1814, and it is on the / September which is both la saint-Leu (AF, 270) and the beginning of the Russian ecclesiastical year that Frederic visits Rosanette's new apartment and notices the espalier of roses and the Byzantine Virgin and casket which symbolise New Year's Day (11, 101).
Alexander's role in Josephine's life is as important as his role in Hortense's. It was while strolling with the Czar that Josephine caught the chill from which she died (Aretz, 129), and that death is commemorated by the moment, on the night of 29 May 1850, in which the earth stands still as Frederic leaves the home of the recently conquered Mme Dambreuse (n, 141). The 'suspension universelle des choses' is an acknowledgement of the role of women in the Imperial enterprise, as is indicated by the coincidence of the date with the Fall of Constantinople on 2g May 1433, at which time the death of Constantine XI was the breaking of the line that led back to the Caesars. The theme of the Imperial consort is given thorough treatment in Le Sexefaible, where the blue-coated, toupet-wearing survivor of the Beresina, General Varin des Hots, is the uncle/godfather of the hero, Paul Duvernier, and the lover of two servants. Varin has had a long-standing but clandestine cohabitation with his old servant, Gertrude, and, after her death, he moves on to Paul's former servant and mistress, Victoire, later known as Mme de Saint-Laurent (11, 386). Naturally, Victoire first catches Paul's eye when she pricks her fingers (n, 372), for the
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consorts of the military conqueror who is the imperator are always associated with parthenogenesis through the failure to recognise paternity always associated with the imperial theme in Flaubert. The servante/amie/campagne relationship between Varin and Gertrude/Victoire (11, 386) shows the conqueror's inability to see women in any but subservient roles, and the constant imperial insecurity about paternity is conveyed through the figure of M. de Gremonville, 'un impotent, un malade5 (11, 372), who has lived in Toulouse since the separation from his family which dates from the birth of his younger daughter, Therese (n, 372). The parallels with Bonaparte family history are quite specific here: Toulouse was the place of reconciliation of Louis and Hortense Bonaparte prior to the conception of Louis Napoleon, and to Toulouse Louis returned after the failure of the reconciliation during the family reunion at Saint-Cloud (Corley, 5). Louis's refusal to recognise Louis Napoleon as his son until the time just prior to his own death is reflected in the long separation between Gremonville, who bears a Flaubert family name, and his family. Just as Gremonville is reputed to be impotent, insane and ill, so Louis Bonaparte was defined by his imperial brother as suffering from a syphilis-induced insanity (ibid., 2). If Gremonville is 'ce pere invisible' (11, 372), Varin is 'un faux parrain' according to Roch (11, 384), and his purloining of his nephew/godson's mistress is portrayed as a repetition of his seduction of Gertrude: 'Oh! la jolie petite Gertrude!' (11, 385, 386). Victoire's names refer to Napoleon's paternity of the infamous Leon, son of the Eleonore who was installed in the former marital home of the Bonapartes in the Rue de la Victoire at the time of Leon's birth. Eleonore's pseudonym, Mme de la Saint-Laurent (Fleischmann, 73, 106), is that of Victoire after she makes the transition from servant to mistress, and the names of the other servants in Le Sexefaible, Dominique, Josephine and Marie, are related to Bonapartist sexuality as well, for Dominique was Eleonore Denuelle's father (ibid., 240). Gaetan de Rumpigny is called 'Gaston' at one point in the play (n, 380): this was the name of Comte Leon's second son (Fleischmann, 235). In an environment which defines Tal-
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leyrand as one of the 'grands modeles' (n, 366), it is not surprising to find that women are defined as a powerful network of evil temptresses who are responsible for the loss of empires (11, 368). The play's end leaves no doubt as to which is le sexe faible.
From the beginning in Flaubert, the name Rose or its variants is associated with servants or with Messalina-figures who are blamed for consuming the revenue of empires. The Rose who must look after the potatoes in Agonies (1, 159) is followed by the Rosalinde whose name is substituted for Herminie in ESv. the fashionable singer Rosalinde is 'la maitresse du Prince' who sleeps with her coachman and cqui eut devore le revenu d'un empire' (1, 291). Rosanette/Rose-Annette is both the Republique/ray publica and the Imperial consort, the woman who 'se divertissait des rosettes' (n, 115) symbolising the Republic and the Napoleonic Legion d'Honneur. As Hrosa, she is the Valkyr on her tall, shadowy horse weaving her web of victory (CY, 341); as 'cette bonne Marechale', she is finally the mother of an adopted son. Neither the Republic nor the Empire was able to sow itself into the soil of France, and Rose-Annette's name indicates that the progression from Republic to Napoleonic regime was one that 'didn't take' in Flaubert's day and in the period which preceded Flaubert's disinherited generation. Baudelaire expressed the relationship between the Republic and syphilis (Hemmings, 41): just as syphilis was the punishment for sexual promiscuity, so Republicanism, an infection equally incurable, was punishment for the crime of social promiscuity, of prostituting oneself to the masses. The harness which is the military uniform as well as the sign of the horse's subservience is the basis of Rosanette's identity as the Marechale or horse-servant, as the hros itself and as the thorny rose which symbolises the syphilitic legacy bequeathed by imperial consorts whose role in the dynastic enterprise is always denied or undervalued. Because the Empress is she through whom the line is perpetuated, dynasties which fail to take root in the Sacred Soil of France are doomed to pass on a debased legacy. When Frederic meets the Napoleonic/Republican Arnoux, women are compared to cigars; when Jules meets
1
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Bernardi in ESi, women are compared to horses (1, 298): in both cases, the weaker sex is something to be consumed, then discarded. Through a gender reversal which makes Rosanette a Napoleonic warrior, Flaubert conveys the common factors of conquest and plunder in the amorous and martial arenas, symbolised by the swanskin dais on which the Marechaleh bed is mounted. This gateway to Valhalla shows the rivalry in every familial situation and the folly of any man who thought he could play 'pony express' with women named de Beauharnais.
Conclusion
La betise consiste ... A 1965 article on Vigny's poetry in the Modern Language Review contains the following evaluation: 'Vigny is blithely indifferent to historical accuracy. Wanda misdates a battle and the death of a Czar; providing the dates is bad enough, but they are wilfully wrong. Others cannot be reconciled with realism' (Bowman, 359). In view of Vigny's precision about dates (Toesca, 69) and the fact that he seems to have carried the entire calendar of saints in his head (ibid., 40-1), and especially of his habit of furnishing his poems in later editions with earlier dates so as to try to deny Chenier's influence (Brandes, 81), one wonders how it is possible to make such naive statements. It is not enough that Vigny is accused of being slipshod: the question of the bienseances rears its antiquated head as well. Poetry and dates are incompatible; dates are in bad taste in a literary work: 'providing the dates is bad enough, but they are wilfully wrong'. Is this not the precise attitude upon which the writer relies in order to encode his cryptic messages? Slipshod readings of literary works, here betokened by the 'wilfully wrong' comment, enable subliminal messages to be absorbed unawares by the reader. If Vigny takes the trouble to be 'wilfully' inaccurate, is it not worth the (professional) reader's while to consider the effect/cause of such inaccuracies? It would seem obvious that the function of cryptic messages in a literary work is to beat the censorship in an oppressive regime, especially in view of the press laws governing Flaubert's career (J&T, 186-7). Yet this does not account for the encoding 282
Conclusion
283
of secrets from the author's autobiography, secrets which could be of overwhelming interest only to the author. This particular habit relates surely to the need to satisfy the self as well as to relate the literary enterprise to that relationship between the individual and his times which is the basis for the experience and evaluation of those times. Just as the repetition inherent in a date system gives shape to the events of the novel, so the encoding of autobiographical events gives shape to the author's life. This two-way therapeutic process is further witness to the power and efficacy of literature.
Diachronic and synchronic charts
HOW TO USE THESE TABLES
(a) Chronologies pp. 286-301 (b) Charts pp. 301-74
Once the principle of (b) is grasped, (a) is easily understood. The charts (pp. 301-74)
Each separate table encapsulates in schematic form a particular section of Dr Addison's text, and can best be understood in conjunction with that section of text. Example:
BOX 1, pp. 301-2 is a diagrammatic statement of the text on pp. 22-6. The columns on t h e ^ r left and the column on t h e ^ r right are straightforward: (i) Column far left headed DAT: Each day dealt with is numbered according to its place in the sequence in Flaubert's narrative. Thus, the DAT column in box 1 covers days 1—11 or days 1—21 (the length of this sequence in Flaubert's narrative being uncertain). (ii) Column far right summarises the main text in note form. (iii) The other columns represent a series of ALTERNATIVE DATINGS, reading vertically (sometimes a column is left blank). The column furthest to the right incorporates the likely or actual 284
How to use these tables
285
dating, as reflected in Flaubert's text. The columns to the left incorporate hypothetical datings. Thus: a. the column headed Oct/Nov covers a hypothetical period from 25 October (day 1) to 4 November (day 11) b. the column headed Sept/Oct covers a hypothetical period from 25 September (day 1) to 5 October (day 11). Note: the sign ' / ' indicates 'from ... to'; thus 'Sept/Oct' = 'from September to October'. Where V is omitted, the months named are intended as alternatives. That is the case for the column which follows to the right: c. the column headed Oct Apr covers a period in either October (the 'realistic' option) or April (hypothetical). This October—April alternative (like that which follows between December and June in box 2) reflects what Dr Addison calls the 'six-month rule', whereby Flaubert imagines anniversaries at six-month intervals. A further alternative is also worked in in this column, i.e. between 5 or 15 October [or April) through 12 or 22 October (or April) to 15 or 22 October (or April). This ten-day variation reflects the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. It recurs in other tables, wherever it is considered to be relevant (hence the occasional references here and elsewhere to dates in the sixteenth century, etc). A further example: BOX 4, pp. 303-3
Again, the table simply represents in schematic form what is expounded more fully in the corresponding section of the chapter on the first Education sentimentale. (i) Left-hand DAY column and right-hand TEXT column: as BOX I
above. (ii) The two right-hand columns of numbers:
These give two alternative series of datings for the real/
286
Diachronic and synchronic charts
narrative time, that is, beginning at 16 February and going through to 26 February; or, alternatively, beginning at 6 February and going through to 16 February. The other months listed at the head of these two columns represent the timing of episodes in the text covering similar occurrences on the same date (different month). (iii) Middle column: This lists the dates which apply when the aforementioned 'six-month rule' is applied (see above for BOX 1), thus shifting February to August. (iv) Second column from left: This incorporates another chronological sequence echoing the main (real/narrative) sequence. CHRONOLOGY OF THE FIRST EDUCATION
SENTIMENTALE
1837
12/13 Apr
Jules receives Fox (= i2jan/Oct)
5/15 Oct 12/22 Oct 15/25 Oct 22 Oct
Henry and Mme Gosselin arrive Paris (= 25 Sep) Mme Gosselin announces departure (= 2 Oct) Mme Gosselin returns home (= 5 Oct) Aurora Borealis visible in Paris; Flaubert and friends follow Balzac to diligence in Rouen; Henry bitten by Psittacus Aurora; moves into Pension Renaud; reads Jules' first letter (= 12 Oct = 1 Nov) 25 Oct Soiree of recently married A. Henry begins work 1/12/22 Dec Emilie visits Henry's room; dinner (= 1 Jan 1840) 19/29 Dec Jules writes that Easter is four months away 21/31 Dec Henry's first visit to Morel (= 21/31 Jan) 1840
1 Jan 6/16 Feb
Emilie's first visit to Henry's room; dinner Jules meets Bernardi
The first 'Education sentimentale3 11/21 Feb
287
14/24 Feb
Emilie gives rendezvous for next day (also = 11/8) Henry waits at Tuileries Gardens (= 21/22 Aug) Jules meets Lucinde and Mme Artemise (= 13/23 Aug) Jules reads unfinished play to troupe
24-5 Feb
Jules finishes Le Chevalier de Calatrava
25 Feb 16/26 Mar 17/27 Mar 19 Apr 21/2 Apr 22/3 Apr
Reading of finished play postponed (Hernani) Mid-Lent ball at Pension Renaud Morel wounds knee; Henry humiliated in Bois Easter Henry returns to Paris Henry arrives Paris; buys and sends sachet. Jules discovers departure of troupe; follows it Henry seduces Emilie Jules's letter arrives on morning after Henry's seduction of Emilie Emilie manufactures quarrel. Renaud calls in Dr Dulaurier for Mendes's venereal disease Mendes' treatment ceases Morel says farewell to Henry on Pont de la Concorde
12/22 Feb 13/23 Feb
24/5 Apr 25/6 Apr 17/27 Jun 8/18 July 13 Aug
1841
12/22 Mar 13/23 Mar 14/24 Mar 15/25 Mar 16/26 Mar 17/27 Mar 18/28 Mar 17/27 Apr 9/19 May
Captain Nicole's letter; 2 years' papers burned. Henry forges his father's signature Henry and Emilie leave Paris Arrive Le Havre Embarkation on the Aimable-Constance. Morel writes to Gosselins Gosselins receive letter and leave for Paris Gosselins arrive Paris; Classics v. Romantics. Mendes sees Catherine and Renaud; becomes Catherine's lover by blackmail Promised but doesn't arrive Morel advises Gosselins to return home Henry's letter to parents arrives
288
Diachronic and synchronic charts
15/25 May
Ship due to arrive New York (2-month voyage) 1843
15/25 Mar
Henry and Emilie arrive in France; Henry is to spend 2/3 years in Aix 1846
4 Oct
Henry's 'duel' with Renaud: Henry aged about
5 Oct
Jules's encounter with 'Fox' 1848 Henry is 27; Jules 26 CHRONOLOGY OF MADAME BOVARY
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Broken leg. Death of Heloise Marriage. Ball Conception of Berthe Visit of Charles's mother and Emma's father. Move to Yonville. Berthe born Leon leaves Yonville. Cornices Agricoles Pied-hot. Crise nerveuse Opera. Music lessons. The Blind Man Charles to Rouen Masked ball. Emma dies. Leon marries Charles dies
289
Chronology of 'Madame Bovary' Equivalences Lavatio 19 Mar 20 Mar 21 Mar 22 Mar 23 Mar 24 Mar 25 Mar 26 Mar 27 Mar 28 Mar
27 Mar 28 Mar 29 Mar 30 Mar 31 Mar 1 Apr 2 Apr 3 Apr 4 Apr 5 Apr
Calendar change 19 Mar 20 Mar 21 Mar 22 Mar 23 Mar 24 Mar 25 Mar 26 Mar 27 Mar 28 Mar
29 Mar 30 Mar 31 Mar 1 Apr 2 Apr 3 Apr 4 Apr 5 Apr 6 Apr 7 Apr
Era of Constantinople 19 Mar 20 Mar 21 Mar
22 Mar 23 Mar 24 Mar 25 Mar 26 Mar 27 Mar 28 Mar
30 Mar/Aug 31 Mar/Aug / Apr/Sep
2 Apr/Sep 3 Apr/Sep 4 Apr/Sep 5 Apr/Sep 6 Apr/Sep 7 Apr/Sep 8 Apr/Sep
Detailed chronology
23 Oct 1827 Mar/Apr 1832 3 Sep 1833 Jan 1834 (Fri) Sep 1834 1 Nov 1834 17 Dec 1834
5 Jan 1836 6 Jan 1836 21 Feb 1836 1 Mar 1836 17/27 Feb/Mar 31 Mar 1836 1 Apr 1836 31 Aug 1836 1 Oct 1836 24 Mar 1837 26 Mar 1837 Apr 1837
Charbovari (aged 15) At age 20, begins 18 months of idleness Fails final year of medical studies Death of Mme Rouault (3/1/1834; 1/1/ 1836) Qualifies after a year of memorising Begins practising at Tostes Charles marries Heloise Gervais Dubuc Charles called to Les Bertaux Arrives at Les Bertaux Theodore Rouault walks again Notary absconds (= 9 Feb) Heloise dies Theodore pays bill Charles returns to Les Bertaux Emma offers Charles a drink after harvest Charles's proposal accepted Charles marries Emma (= 1 Apr) Charles and Emma leave for Tostes Charles 3 years in Tostes: should be autumn
290
Diachronic and synchronic charts
4-5 Oct 1837 3-4 Oct 1838 4/31 Oct 1838/9 5 Oct/1 Nov 1838 1 Jul 1838/40 1 Oct 1838/40 4 Oct 1838/40 Nov 1840 21-4 Feb 1841 24 Mar/1 Apr 1841 1 Sep/Apr/Nov 1838 27 Mar 1841 29 Mar 1841 30 Mar 1841 Apr 1841 4 Apr/Jul 1841 18 Apr/Jul 1841 22 Apr/Jul 1841 23 Apr/Jul 1841 23 May/Aug 1841 24May/Aug 1841 4 Nov 1841 10 Nov 1841 21 Nov 1841 20 Feb 1842 21 Feb 1842 Feb/Mar 1842 26 Mar 1842 1 Apr 1842
7 Apr/Jul 1842 17 Feb 1842
Ball at La Vaubyessard Porte-cigares; Emma sacks Nastasie c un trou dans sa vie5 Emma counts days until October Series of same days begins Berthe conceived Lyon floods Theodore visits, bringing turkey Visit to Lariviere. Charles 4 years in Tostes Emma pricks fingers on wedding bouquet (4/4) Departure from Tostes (6/4) Arrival in Yonville (7/4) 3000 francs spent in 2 years of marriage Berthe born Name chosen; baptismal date set Bovary parents arrive Berthe's baptism (Feasts of George and Magi) Bovary parents leave Visit with Leon to Mme Rollet's Leon gives Charles tete phrenologique (Jete) Leon receives carpet (Jete) Leon steals Emma's yellow glove (violets) Visit to linen factory Lheureux's first visit: mourning band Berthe brought home from nurse's Felicite tells story of La Guerine Visit to Bournisien; swollen cow; Berthe's cheek Charles asks Leon to buy daguerreotype for Emma Leon leaves for Paris (death of Romulus)
Chronology of 'Madame Bovary3
8 Apr/Jul 1842 18 Feb 1842 27 Jul 1842 5/15 May/Aug 1842 7/17 Aug 1842 12/22 Aug 1842 26 Aug/5 Sep 1842 16/26 Sep 1842
291
Solar eclipse: 'atmosphere noire' (8/7/
Mother leaves; Emma meets Rodolphe Cornices Agricoles Homais's article on Cornices appears Tellier sold up; Rodolphe goes hunting 'II est trop tard maintenant' Rodolphe returns 4 Oct 1842 Rodolphe seduces Emma in forest 5 Oct 1842 Return to forest; correspondence begins 1 Apr 1843 Spring returns; affair is six months old Letter from Theodore Rouault. Emma sulks 11 Apr 1843 Pied-bot operation 12/13 May/Aug 1843 Thigh amputation 26Jun 1843 Lheureux brings whip 27 Jun 1843 Facture detaillee 29 Jun 1843 Desoserays pays 15 napoleons 2Jul1843 Emma pays Lheureux. Porte-cigares soon 3 years ago 31 Oct 1843 Mme Bovary mere glimpses Felicite's lover 1 Nov 1843 Elopement decided. Time loop to 31 March Charles's nuit conjugate dreams I Apr/2 Nov 1842 May/Aug/Nov Emma orders luggage from Lheureux 2-3 Sep 1843 Emma and Rodolphe: last rendezvous 3/14 Sep 1843 Emma's crise nerveuse (Julian/Gregorian) II Sep 1842 16 Oct 1843 Charles's continuous nursing ceases 24 Oct 1842 1 Nov 1843 Emma's relapse, Charles's two loans 24 Mar 1844/5 Mother leaves, ONE YEAR DROPPED 27 Mar 1844/5 Emma's altercation with Felicite 1 Apr 1844/5 Emma has garden turned over: aristoloche Literary discussion in Yonville 5 Apr/Jul 1845 15 Aug 1844 6 Apr/Jul 1845 Lucie in Rouen. Bovary/?£>£ dies 16 Aug 1844
Diachronic and synchronic charts
2 2
9
15 Aug 1845 16 Aug 1845 7 Apr/Jul 1845 17 Aug 1845 18 Aug 1845 19 Aug 1845 24-6 Aug 1845 1 Sep/Nov 1844/5 5 Dec 1844 12-13 Dec 1844 19-20 Mar 1846 24 Mar 1846 31 May 1846 24 Aug/Sep 1847
Leon visits Emma at La Croix-Rouge Cathedral and fiacre. UAmour . . . conjugal! Mme Bovary mere arrives Lheureux proposes arrangement Honeymoon in Rouen, ruban ponceau Charles owes 1070 francs The Blind Man appears. Return to 1844 Charles to Rouen Masked ball in Rouen Emma dies Felicite and Theodore decamp, Leon marries Charles dies
CHRONOLOGY OF SALAMMBO
A p r / O c t 241 26 A p r / O c t 241 27 A p r / O c t 241 28 A p r / O c t 241 29 A p r / O c t 241 30 A p r / O c t 241 1 May/Nov 2/3 May/Nov 4 May/Nov 241 15 May/Nov 241 16 May/Nov 241 19 May/Nov 241 10 J u n e / D e c 241 13 June/Dec 241
13 Aug/Sep 241 24-5 Jun/Dec 241 24-5 Aug/Sep 241
Festin
Matho sees Salammbo's veil at sunrise 300 Baleares arrive at night Army leaves; Baleares oversleep; slaughter Slaughter continues; Zarxas leaves Carthage Army reaches river with rose-laurels Spendius' anguish calmed in evening Crucified lions; some return to Carthage Arrival at Sicca Hannon arrives at Sicca Hannon flees on ass Mercenaries arrive before Carthage Giscon arrives at Mercenary camp Giscon imprisoned. War begins
Theft of £aimph (Tammouz/Eloul/ Tibby)
Chronology of 'Salatntnbd'
25-6 June/Dec 241 25/6 Aug/Sep 241 17 Nov 241/May 240 10 Sep 241/Mar 240 17 May/Nov 240 14 Feb/Aug 239 14 Mar/Sep 239 2 4-5 Jun/Dec 239 25 June/Dec 239 25 Aug 239/Feb 238 24-5 Sep 239/Mar 238 2/3 Nov/May/Aug
293
Tent feast/alliance Battle of Utica
Battle of Utica (joke about T's slowness) Hamilcar returns to Carthage (Schebat/Eloul) Hamilcar crosses Macar Battle of the Macar (Eloul/Tibby). '2 ans' 'Sous la Tente' First attack on Carthage (Schabar = Siv) /Feb 27 Mar/Sep 238 Second attack on Carthage 8/9 Oct 239/Apr 238 Defile trap 17 Nov 239/May 238 Crucifixions 10 March/Sept 238 Crucifixions 12 Jun/Dec 238 Capture of Matho i3jun/Dec 238 Last Barbarian in Defile dies. '3 ans5 13/27 Oct 2381Apr 237 Matho dies; Salammbo marries. War ends SALAMMBO AND THE SECOND REPUBLIC (AGULHON
1983, 238-42) 1848 23 Apr 26-8 Apr 4 May 15 May 22-6 June 4 Nov 21 Nov
First elections by universal suffrage Bloody disturbances in Rouen Formal proclamation of Republic by elected deputies Assembly invasion/trap June Days' Proclamation of Constitution Solemn]promulgation of the Constitution 1849
i3june
Demonstrations over Italian expedition
Diachronic and synchronic charts
294
1850
31 May
Suffrage law 1851
2 Dec
Coup d'etat
4 Dec
Boulevard deaths end Months
i.
2.
3456.
78. 9-
10.
II. 12.
Nyssan (March-April) Siv (April-May) Sivan (May-June) Tammouz (June-July) Ab (July-August) Eloul (August-September) Tischri (September-November) Heshvan (October-November) Kislev (November-December) Tibby (December-January) Schebat (January-February) Adar (February-March)
Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer Leo
Virgo Libra Scorpio Sagittarius Capricorn Aquarius Pisces
CHRONOLOGY OF ^EDUCATION SENTIMENTALE (1869) 184O 15-16 Sep
Ville-de-Montereau and Cygne de la Croix
16 Nov
Visit to Dambreuse 1841
1 Jan 11-12 Jun 1 Dec 11-12 Dec 28-29 Dec
Visiting cards ignored Palais-Royal Theatre shock Dussardier and Hussonnet Reunion with Arnoux; Pellerin's commissions Postponed invitations and artistic fraud
Chronology of 'UEducation sentimentale' (i86g)
295
1842
5-7 Jan 1 o /14 Jun 1/5 Jul 15 Aug 20 Aug 20—24 Nov
Trout from Geneva; Rue de Choiseul Arnoux name Marie and Balandard Frederic fails law Rendezvous of Arnoux and Rosanette Marie's return 1843
23-24 Apr 24 May/Jun 12-15 Aug
Alhambra Saint-Cloud Picnic and return to Nogent 1844
14-17 Sep 24 Sep 8 Oct 17 Dec
3 Mar 17 Mar 8 Sep 15 Sep 11 Dec 12 Dec 13 Dec
Picnic and return to Nogent. Roque marriage Frederic abandons plan to write to Marie Frederic abandons plan to write to Arnoux Mme Moreau's lamentations cease 1845 Deslauriers and Senecal begin living together Frederic receives letter informing him of this Uncle Barthelemy arrives in Nogent Leaves Nogent five years after Ville-de-Montereau Frederic refuses Roque's invitation to La Fortelle Knocks over washing bucket Receives news of inheritance Coach full; 24-hour delay, YEAR DROPPED 1846
14 Dec 15 Dec
Mme Eleonore dies. Frederic leaves after farewell from Louise, who is taller Arrives Paris and can't find Arnoux
296 16 Dec
17 Dec 18-19 Dec 20-21 Dec
Diachronic and synchronic charts Search for Regimbart. Reunion with Arnoux and their son who is almost 3 years old, therefore conceived 24 March/May 1854 at Saint-Cloud Reunion with Deslauriers chez Vefour Frederic in Le Havre Rosanette's costume ball
1847 13 Jan 14 Jan 17 Jan 18 Jan 20 Feb 21 Feb 22 Feb 24 Feb 25 Feb
26 Feb 3 Mar 23 Mar 24 Mar
2 Apr 2/9 Apr 10 Apr 1 May 2 May 3 May 4 May
Dambreuse reception then visit to Rosanette Visit to Marie Arnoux Frederic's housewarming Visit to Marie. Arnoux to Rosanette after Oudry Portrait sitting, Hussonnet and Deslauriers ask for 15,000 francs. Letter from Mme Moreau Dines with Marie Arnoux Sees Oudry at Dambreuse's Rosanette expels Oudry. Dambreuse ball (violets) Rosanette's 'liberty' begins with Delmar. Cachemire argument: mention of Saturday 14, Tautre mois' Promised three times but doesn't arrive Visit to Dambreuse. Cisy introduced to Rosanette Letter from notary re arrival of 15,000 francs. Deslauriers dismisses Clemence Daviou Arnoux asks Frederic to take the place of Vanneroy. Frederic gives him 15,000 francs, repayable 31/3 Arnoux doesn't repay. Deslauriers humiliated Marie and Eugene visit: rosary Frederic visits Dambreuse Frederic expected by Dambreuse; goes to Creil instead Champ de Mars and Cafe Anglais. Cisy's depucelage. Arnoux with Rosanette Arnoux returns to factory; dismisses Senecal
Chronology of CUEducation sentimentale' (i86g) 5 May 19-21 May 6 Jun 27 Jun 30 Jun 1 Jul 2 Jul 5 Jul 31 Jul 1 Aug 2 Aug 9 Aug 16/18 Aug 19-20 Aug 21/31 Aug 1 Sept 2 Sept 5 Oct 6 Oct 7 Oct 8 Oct 9 Oct 1 Nov
297
Senecal attends memorial service for Godefroi Cavaignac Maison d'Or and duel in Bois de Boulogne Senecal arrested over bomb conspiracy Poulette article and peacock portrait Frederic attends Dambreuse soiree Reunion with Deslauriers Frederic tells of loss of 15,000 francs Frederic won't allow proceedings against Marie Loses 60,000 francs Returns to Nogent Talk with mother re Louise Roque Regarded as 'le futur' of Louise Louise proposes; Deslauriers visits Marie Frederic with Roque at La Fortelle Leaves for and arrives in Paris. La Vatnaz visits Visit to Rosanette Encounters Marie on way to Deslauriers Dussardier's punch', portrait purchase urged Portrait arrives Frederic visits Marie in shop; will never marry Declaration of love to Marie Follows Marie to Auteuil Marie bends over to look for violets 1848
1 Jan 11/21 Feb
12/22 Feb
13/23 Feb
Meetings disrupted before and after this date Eugene ill; Frederic obtains rendezvous. Frederic prepares seduction venue. Letter from mother, note from Deslauriers: pear is ripe. Marie dreams of little dog (Eugene) Frederic waits in Rue Tronchet. Marie nurses Eugene. Old doctor arrives. Eugene disgorges tube of parchment and is saved No answer from message to Marie. Russian prince has just left; Frederic's depucelage at Rosanette's apartment. Second 'defloration' in Rue Tronchet
298
Diachronic and synchronic charts
14/24 Feb 15/25 Feb 16/26 Feb 13 March 16 March 23 March
Frederic sobs into pillow Lamartine and tricolore Senecal urges workers to Hotel de Ville Frederic sees Pellerin and Regimbart Dambreuse and Martinon visit Frederic Visit to Dambreuse: Republic/Christ portrait; Delmar, at Rosanette's, says he has been crucified for art 23 Mar/Apr Club de ^Intelligence on election day: 2 months since Revolution; rich leaving Paris 13/23/25 Apr Quarrel over gold sheep. 'Russian prince3 has just left (= 23 Feb/Mar/Apr/Jun) 15 May Arnoux saves Dambreuse during Assembly invasion 24 May Frederic meets Arnoux on Rosanette's staircase 20 June Arnoux asks Frederic to take his place 21 June They lunch together 22 June Frederic and Rosanette leave for Fontainebleau 23 June Rosanette gives age as 29 24 June Dussardier saves gamin/ tricolore 25 June They leave for Paris 26June Empty parrot's perch and 'Henri V . Frederic finds Dussardier with Clemence Vatnaz as nurse. Roque kills adolescent 28 June Dambreuse dinner 29 June Humiliation of Louise Roque 10 Dec Arnoux has opened boutique for Bordelaise 29 Dec Frederic meets Compain and Mignot; Rosanette interrupts Frederic and Marie at first kiss; Rosanette pregnant. Clemence's bill arrives 30 Dec Frederic sees Delmar and Dussardier at Clemence Vatnaz's raout
1849 13 May 13 June
Dambreuse elected to Legislative Assembly Conservatoire incident
Chronology of 'Bouvard et Pecuchet'
299
1850 28 May/June Cecile marries Martinon 29 May/June Frederic 'conquers' Mme Dambreuse. Reunion with Deslauriers. Paul de Gremonville leaves at midnight 1851 3 Jan 10 Jan 12-15 Feb 10-14 Jun 27 Jun 13-18 Oct 22 Nov 27—8 Nov 1-5 Dec
Changarnier dismissed; Dambreuse's attack Dambreuse destroys second will Death of Dambreuse; birth of Frederic Baslin Rosanette's saisie; last view of Arnoux Dussardier saves Rosanette Death of Frederic Baslin and escape of Arnoux Frederic breaks with Rosanette Deslauriers seduces Rosanette Marie sold up; Dussardier dies; Deslauriers marries Louise 756*7
22 Mar
Marie visits Frederic 1868
22 Nov
Frederic and Deslauriers sit by the fire
CHRONOLOGY OF BOUVARD ET PECUCHET
13 Aug 1837 15 Sep 1838 14 Aug 1837 10-20 Dec 1838 10-20 Jan 1839 1/5 Jan/Feb 1839 20 Jan 1839
Meeting on Boulevard Bourdon (= 16 July 1837) Pecuchet removesflanelle(= 17/7 = 16/9) Death of Bouvard/?^. News arrives News of amount of inheritance arrives News of M. Alexandre's objections arrives
3°° 20 Jun/Jul 1839 20 Dec 1840 20-29 Jun 1841 20-29 Mar 1842 Nov 1842 26N0V 1841/7 10/20 Dec 1841/7 11/21 Dec 1841/7 13 Aug 1843 25 Feb 1848 4 Jun 1848 6Jun 1848 19 Jul 1848 19/20 Oct 1848 10 Dec 1848 23 Mar 1850 17 Oct 1850 2-6 Dec 1851 1 Apr 1852 8 Apr 1852 1 Apr 1853/4 1Jul1853/4 20 Dec 1853/6 21 Dec 1853/6 22 Dec 1853/6 23 Dec 1853/6 24 Dec 1853/6
Diachronic and synchronic charts
Bouvard takes possession of his inheritance Chavignolles property is all paid up Journey to Chavignolles Cider-making Spots appear in preserves. Gouys appear Malaga sampled; still explodes (1841 1847) Germaine finds spatula in yard Pecuchet's brothel story; torture of yellow dog(= i6July = i 5 Sep)(i843 = 1848) Chavignolles learns of February Revolution UEmeute de Chavignolles (= 1850)
Gorju's dismissal of Mme Castillon (= 1850) Gorju arrested (= 1850) Gorju's release due (= 1850) Chavignolles votes for Louis Bonaparte Petit humiliated by Jeufroy Faverges's luncheon party (= 1848) Coup d'etat and Pecuchet's infatuation for Melie Mme Bordin accepts Bouvard's proposal; Pecuchet seduces Melie in cave. (1841= 1852) B&P disillusioned with love. Syphilis too soon Swollen cow; flowering appletrees. (= 1842/3) Vaucorbeil diagnoses syphilitic sores St Peter ejected; 20 appletrees blown over Farm mortgaged; Les Ecalles sold. Bills paid Gouy demands reduction in rent Coulon finds for Gouy. Dinner inedible Pecuchet has cold in head and permanent
The first 'Education sentimentale'
16J11I 1854/7 13 Aug 1854/7 24-5 Dec 1854/7 10 Apr 1857/68 21 Jun 1855/8/61 22 Jun 1855/8/61 23 Jun 2 6 Jun 29 Jun 30 Jun 24 Aug 1858/9/62 3 May 1859 8Jul1859 29 Jan 1859
301
fever; Vaucorbeil prescribes orange syrup with iodide Dumouchel-Poulet marriage announced; dead dog (= ! 8 5 7 = 1861) Temptation to suicide; midnight mass. Marcel Bouvard can't eat meat on Good Friday Journey to Notre-Dame de la Delivrande (= 1841/7). Flaubert writes 1857 (G-M, 35) Meeting with Barberou; Marescot's visit Return to Chavignolles Bouvard sells estate to Mme Bordin Jeufroy's annual feast Bouvard feels better Dialogue with Jeufroy; St Joseph medal France declares war on Austria (guerre d'ltalie) Franco-Austrian armistice (= !8 5 8 = 1863) Bouvard finds Romiche and Victorine Flaubert writes 1868 (G-M, 35)
THE COLOURS OF TIME IN THE FIRST EDUCATION SENTIMENTALE I. Day
Oct NOV
Sep Oct HENRY ARRIVES IN PARIS, MOTHER RETURNS, O c t Apr PERRUCHE ROUGE, JULES's FIRST LETTER: OCTOBER 1839 (i, 278-81).
1
25
25
8 18
1
2
5 75
12 22
Henry and Mme Gosselin arrive in Paris, October. (25 Sep = 5 Oct 1583; 5/15 Oct 1582) Mother announces departure after '8 jours'. Henry receives Jules's first letter as a 'debarque de 8 jours'. Henry's finger attacked by perruche rouge. Arrival at Pension Renaud: first sight of Emilie. 22/10/1839: Aurora borealis visible in Paris; Gustave follows
302 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Oct Sep NOV Oct
Oct Apr
HENRY ARRIVES IN PARIS, MOTHER RETURNS, PERRUCHE ROUGE, JULES's FIRST LETTER! OCTOBER 1839 (i, 278-81).
Balzac in Rouen. 12/4: Jules's Jete; 12/10: la saint-Renaud; 1/11/1839: Emile Judee dies. 12/ 10/1492: Columbus discovers America. (22 Oct = 1 Nov 1587) 15 11 21
4
5
25
Mother departs. Newly married A. gives party, 'le 25'. 25/10/1849: Gustave leaves mother for trip to Orient: his worst day (11, 551). 25/10/1839: Achille returns from honeymoon.
2. Day
Dec
Jan
Dec
EMILIE'S FIRST VISIT TO HENRY'S ROOM 1839/
Jun
Jul
Jun
1840 (1,283-7).
2
I
/
13 23
12
12
22
22
Jan/Dec: nightfall 4 p.m. Emilie steals key to Henry's cqffret; leaves her own room key. Dinner party introduces Ternande in green coat, Dubois and Lenoir families, Shahutsnischbach, Alvares and Mendes. Literary discussion Antony and Hernani ridiculed; refs to Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Empire lit, Jocelyn. M. Dubois wears blue coat: that's all narrator knows of him, as he has seen him only from behind. Hortense is only daughter of M. and Mme Dubois. 22/12/1539: Racine's baptism. 12/13 Dec 1821: Gustave born. 1/1/1842: Adolphe born. 1/1/1844: crise nerveuse. 2/12/ 1839: Aglae Hanonnet m. Charles Didier. 1/1: Emilie's waist thinner. 22/12: eMa femme3 . . . dans Vescalier. 1/12 Dec 1841: Dussardier, Hussonnet; Benjamin Constant mentioned (state funeral 12/12/1830). 1/6/1839: Achille Flaubert married Julie Lormier. (1/12 Dec 1701, 10/20 Dec 1582, 22/12/15821/1/1583, 1/12 Jan 1701, 2/12 Jan 1584, 12/22 Jan 1584) SUN
The first 'Education sentimentale'
303
3Day
Dec
Dec
Dec
JULES'S SECOND LETTER AND HENRY'S VISIT TO
Jan
Jan
Jan
MOREL 1839. (1, 288-91).
1
4
24
6
9
29
ig
7
10
30
20
8
11
31
21
Aug
Feb
Feb
Day
Jan
Nov Sep May Oct Jun 1
15
14
Jules's visit to college on day Gustave expelled. Jules writes that Easter is 4 months away and NY'sD soon. 9/12/1839: classroom riot leading to expulsion 14/12. Henry receives letter 'un sot jour de decembre, apre et terne'. Emilie visits him. (10/ 20 Dec 1582) Henry visits Morel. Substitutes name Rosalinde for allusion to grisette: hermine = roselet. Morel: 'Decochez!' 31/12/1839: Louise Colet obtains govt pension. 31/12/1849: Gustave and Mohammed scandalise Delatour.
FAILED RENDEZVOUS AND BERNARDI'S TROUPE,
Mar Mar 1840 (1, 293-300). Apr Apr Dec Dec 6
16
Jules meets Bernardi. 16/12/1846: Frederic reunited with Arnoux. 6/8/1840: Louis Napoleon's Boulogne coup fails. (6/16 Feb 1682) SUN
l
7
7
18
8
Second meeting: women compared to horses. MON
3 4 5
18
18
18
220 0
18
8 88 g9 10 10
18
20 20
11
21
19 ig
11 21
TUE WED
20/2/1840: Nemours's endowment provokes govt crisis. THU Emilie gives Henry rendezvous in Tuileries Gardens for following day. 11/21 Feb 1820:
304 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Jan
Aug
Nov Sep May Oct
Jun
Feb
Feb
Mar Mar Apr Apr
1
'A nous deux, maintenant!' 11/21 Feb 1848: Marie grants Frederic rendezvous for following day. Renaud reads De'bats. 11/8: Armenian era. 11/21 Sep/Dec: Emma's crise, NV. (11/21 Feb 1583) FRI
12 22
12
22
23
13
23
12 22
8
2 3 13 23
1840 (1, 293-300).
Dec Dec
31
7
FAILED RENDEZVOUS AND BERNARDI'S TROUPE,
Henry waits in vain in Tuileries Gardens. Nightfall at 4 p.m., so 22/2 = 22/12. 22/2/ 1840: Fall of Soult govt cf ministers in Tuileries. 22/12/1839: First Renaud dinner 22/2/1848: Frederic waits in Rue Tronchet; revolution. 22/8/1799: Napoleon abandons Egyptians. 12 Sep/Dec: unrealised date of elopement, NV. 22/2: St Peter's Banquet (keys) cf. Renaud dinner, 22 Dec/Feb. 22/8/1846: Alfred's son Louis Le Poittevin conceived, SAT Jules meets Lucinde and Mme Artemise at rehearsal. Sees performance of Antony. Lucinde's cachemire: blue with long red fringe. 13/8, 23/12: Festivals of Artemis/ Diana. Henry declares love: says first sight of Emilie seems like yesterday (22 Oct/i Nov). 13/8/1837 (Sun): Bouvard meets Pecuchet; Zoraide Turc. 13/8/1840: Morel bids Henry farewell on Pont de la Concorde. 23/2/1848: Frederic's depucelage. 23/2: Ste Isabelle. 13/2/1820: Berry assassinated at Opera; silent day in PG. 23/2/1839: Flaubert's depucelage, 'Institut de la rue du Platre.' 3/5/1831: premiere of Antony. SUN
9
10
3 4 14 24
4 5
24
14
24
25
75
25
Jules and Bernardi at Cafe Francais until 1 p.m. Jules late for work. Valentine's Day: Jules notices birds have already returned to leafless trees. Warmth of spring: Feb = March. Reading of first 4 acts of Le Chevalier de Calatrava: accepted. Jules works throughout night to finish it. Isabella Jules's heroine. •Bissextile MON Completed play reading scheduled for 10th anniversary of premiere of Hernani. Post-
The first 'Education sentimentaW 15 25
305
poned. Jules sends letter to Henry after 2ih. Emilie repulses Henry on stairs. 25/8: Louise
26
16
26
Play reading postponed indefinitely. Henry receives Jules's letter. Emilie has been avoiding him in favour of Ternande, who gives her flowers. 26/8/1850: Louise Colet becomes mistress of Octave Lacroix. WED * Bissextile means that 11 = 10 days.
Day
1 2
3
Oct
4 5
6
Apr
Mar
Mar
RAOUT AT PENSION RENAUD; BOISDE BOULOGNE:
Oct
Sep
Sep
1840 (1, 301-6) (CF. I, 590-3; NV, 204 ff.)
3
24 14
(3/14 Sep 1752)
4
25 15
1 2
3 5
4
7
4
6
26 16
27 17
TUE
(25 Sep = 5 Oct 1583) WED Mid-Lent, 1840: Ball at Pension Renaud. Mme Dubois, Aglae and her brother arrive before others. Clara Lenoir dances with her father; her cousin, Hortense, dances with Aglae's brother. Mendes's view of Mme Dubois blocked by young man with lorgnon. Ternande fancies Mme Lenoir. Emilie's gown yellow-gold; Emma's pale saffron. MB: 26 Sep/3 Oct 1838: Ball at La Vaubyessard begins. 3/10/1797: Maurice Schlesinger born (= 30/10/1798) 5/9/1840: Elisa marries Maurice. 6-7 Mar 1850: Night with KuchiukHanem. (1/11 Mar; 16/26 Mar 1631) THU MB: girl drops note into Blue Coat's hat. ih: supper. 3h: waltzing begins at Pension Renaud and La Vaubyessard. Henry and Emma don't know how to waltz: Henry doesn't; Emma does. Emilie dances with young man with lorgnon; Emma with Blue Coat/vicomte. Waltzing only when small number of guests remain, cf. Kuchiuk's dance of bee. 4I1: PR ball ends; Morel attends Opera Ball as Cannibal: hareng saur, German baron with Irma
306 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Oct
Apr
Mar
Mar
RAOUT AT PENSION RENAUD; BOISDE BOULOGNE:
Oct
Sep
Sep
1840 (1, 301-6) (CF. I, 590-3; NV, 204 ff.) drinks from his own hat, mocked unawares. Louisa drops Boucherot for Due de Noyon; Henriette drops Maurissot for d'Ambourg, who betrays her with English ambassadress and beats her. Morel knew Henriette when she wore blue stockings, and knows her still... Henry looks out window until 7I1; Emma until dawn. Breakfast at La Vaubyessard; Morel's breakfast at end of Opera Ball. 8h: Dinah Piedefer meets M. de la Baudraye on her return from Opera Ball attended by Morel; wears debardeuse costume chosen by Emma Bovary exactly a week earlier for Mid-Lent ball in 1846 {La Muse du department, iv, 767). Afternoon: Aglae and her brother, M. Dubois,
visit PR in afternoon; ride in Bois de Boulogne decided. Ternande arrives with young man with lorgnon that he met in the street outside; Alvares and Mendes attend also. Emilie walks between Henry and lorgnon. Henry's sous-pieds snap, trousers ride up to his thigh, whip breaks, horse falls to its knees, Henry gets a drenching. Emilie, wearing amazone, discusses marriage with handsome dandy. Return by cab because of rain: Emilie accuses Henry when cabs are late. In first cab: Emilie, Aglae, Mme Dubois, young dandy and Ternande. In second cab: Henry, Alvares and Mendes. Hence, handsome young dandy with lorgnon is M. Dubois, brother of Aglae and husband of Mme Dubois. MB: Charlesfindsporte-cigares while mending harness. Henry visits Morel in evening. All is pele-mele and dark. Morel has wounded knee: says he has just knocked it on table; later blames dancing. 17/3: Liberalia/ Bacchanalia: Silenus wounds knee. 27/3 = 4/ 4: lavatio. Societe pldtriere. 17/9/1848: TSA re-
jected. 17/3/1841: Parents criticise Henry's literary tastes, Renaud confiscates Notre-Dame de Paris. 27/3/1797: Tami Stello' born. FRI
The first 'Education sentimentale'
307
6. Day
Oct
Apr
Apr
Apr
EASTER HOLIDAYS; TROUPE DEPARTS; SEDUO
Nov
May
Oct
Oct
TION OF EMILIE: 1840 (1, 308-14).
29 30
29 30
20 10
ig 9
Easter Sunday. 19/4/1836: Marie-Adele born.
30
30
21 II
20 10
20/10/1840: Thiers resigns over king's refusal to increase size of army. 29/10: Soult govt formed. MON
QI
i
I
I 2
22 12
21 II
I 2
2
3
23 13
22 12
31
2 3
3 4
24 14
23 13
SUN
Artemise borrows 100 francs. Fox is black with a white spot. Fox came to Jules 3 years ago. Jules asks Henry to buy sachet. Maid gives Henry manteau at night coach. 12/4: Jules's Jete; 12/10: la saint-Renaud. 1839: perruche rouge. (22 Oct = 1 Nov 1587) TUE Henry arrives Paris (cf. 6 months ago): 15 = 22. Busy and sends sachet 12 = 13. 12/4/ 1840: Palm Sunday. WED Bernardi troupe leaves in early hours of morning. Jules receives sachet) discovers troupe's departure from Lion d'Or. Follows; temptation to suicide with beggar girl from bridge. Returns home that night. 3/5: Antony. 23/4 = 3/5/1616: Shakespeare and Cervantes die. 24/4 = 4/5/1843: Frederic tempted to suicide from bridge. 23/4: Vinalia. 3/11 Sep: Emma's crise, MB. THU
3 4
4 5
25 15
24 14
4 5
5 6
26 16
25 15
Jules writes to Henry, saying he's received sachet, and that he discovered Bernardi's troupe had gone yesterday morning. Mentions Mme Herminie. Henry's depucelage: Emilie replaces key of cqffret. 24/10/1840: Eulalie. 14/4: Lydwine. FRI Henry receives Jules's letter after sealing his own account of seduction of Emilie. Reads reference to Mme Herminie, lingere. 26/4: la saint-Hermin.
SAT
308
Diachronic and synchronic charts 7-
Day
Jul
Jun
Jul
MENDES'S
Jan
Dec
Jan
SUMMER, 1840 (1, 317-19).
I 2
I 2
12 22
12 22
VENEREAL
INFECTION:
EARLY
Emilie feigns jealousy; delays Renaud's bringing Dr Dulaurier to treat Mendes's venereal infection. 12/6/1840: pregnant Louise Colet attacks Alphonse Karr with kitchen knife. 1/7/1850: Flaubert and Du Camp return to Kars el-Aini hospital (22/12/1849: syphilis ward). 1/7/1840: Columba a n d Qu3est-ce que la proprie'te? published;
communist banquet at Belleville. Dulaurier's coupe jaune visits for three weeks. (i/i2july 1700; 2/12 July 1584; 22 Dec = 1 Jan 1583)
8. Day
1
Day
1
Aug
Aug
MOREL BIDS FAREWELL TO HENRY ON PONT DE
Feb
Feb
LA CONCORDE, 1840 (1, 317-19).
23
13
Morel tells Henry he envies him at time of full moon. 23/8/1847: Charles envies Rodolphe in MB. 13/23 Feb: Jules meets Lucinde and Artemise. 13/8/1837: Zoraide Turc; Bouvard meets Pecuchet.
Sep/ Apr
O c t / Mar/ ELOPEMENT, 1841 (1,327-41,348).
Aug Jul
Apr Feb/ Jan
12
12
12
22
22
22
Letter from Captain Nicole; Henry burns papers of 2 years' work: 12/22 Mar = 12/22 Oct. Forges father's signature. Emilie's pelisse introduced; Henry lies about his manteau; male-female clothes swap. 12/9/1842: Elopement date in MB (jVF, 433). 22/3/1846: Caroline-Josephine dies. 22/2/1512: Amerigo Vespucci dies. Spring = autumn. FRI
The first 'Education sentimentaW 13
13
13
23
23
23
14 24
1
14 24
14 24
15
2
15
75
25
25
16 26
16 26
25
16 26
17
3
4
27
18 28
5
17
iy
27
27
18 28
18 28
309
Departure from Paris by night coach. Henry's alibi is meeting with Morel in galerie vitree. 13/3/1711: Death of Boileau (recommended by Gosselin and Renaud). 13/3/1634: First session of Academie Franchise. 13/3/1821: Gustave's conception date. 23/2/1839: Gustave's depucelage. 23/2/1840: Lucinde/ cachemire introduced. 23/9/1810: Elisa born. 13/3*. Ivry: panache blanc. SAT Arrival at Le Havre: Henry notices Emilie's wet feet. 14/3/1796: Judee born. 24/3/1846: Emma Bovary dies. A winter night. M. 203: 'Au mois d'avril,/Toute bete change de poiT. 1/4/ 1841: Adolphe conceived. SUN The Aimable-Constance leaves. Henry writes to Gosselins. 15/3/1831: Notre-Dame de Paris published by Gosselin. 15/3: Day of Parricide; Anna Perenna. 15/3/1841: Salon opens. 15/9/ 1810: Louise Revoil born. 15/3: Old Roman New Year's Day; 25/3: American New Year's Day. 15/1/1846: Achille-Cleophas dies. 15/9/ 1840: La Ville-de-Montereau. 4/15 Sep 1 8 4 3 : ^ ^ manquee, MB. 15/9/1822: Vautrin/Herrera carries off Lucien Chardon. MON Gosselins receive letter and leave for Paris. 16/26 Mar 1840: Ball at Pension Renaud begins. TUE Gosselins arrive in Paris; quarrel over NotreDame de Paris. Catherine asks if Morel came to see Emilie; Renaud revealed as Catherine's lover; Mendes seduces Catherine by blackmail. 17/27 Mar 1840: Henry's lavatio in Bois; Morel's wounded knee. 17/8/1844: Homais and UAmour conjugal; 17/2: Gosselins and N-D de Paris. Romantics v. Classics argument. 2 7 / 1 / 1687: Debut de la Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. 17/3: Liberalia. 17/2/1673: Death of Moliere. 17/2: Feast of Fools and Fornacalia. 27/3 = 4/4: lavatio. 4/4/1841: Palm Sunday. 17/9/1849: TSA rejected by Bouilhet and Du Camp. Catherine's burned wrist revealed, WED Promised twice but doesn't arrive. 18/3/1841: Mid-Lent. Equivalent to 5/10 return of'Fox', 1846. THU
310
Diackronic and synchronic charts 10.
Day
Sep Get Get Sep Mar Apr
HENRY-RENAUD DUEL; RETURN OF 'FOX': 1846
i
14 24 27
II
17
14 24
Duel between blue-coated Henry and Renaud in front of the Luxembourg. Renaud's hat cut in half; blue glass from spectacles cuts his cheek. Falls into gutter. 27/3 = 4/4: lavatio. Henry's humiliation in Bois de Boulogne. Morel's wounded knee. Quarrel over Notre-Dame de Paris: its confiscation on 17/27 Mar 1841 turns bouquiniste against Renaud. 24/4/1840: Henry's depucelage. M. Gosselin wore blue spectacles, detested lorgnons; his sideburns appeared to cut his cheeks in half. Henry's Oedipal revenge on Renaud and Gosselin: defeating the father in combat. Midnight 3/4 Apr 1848: Alfred Le Poittevin dies. 17/9/1849: TSA rejected by Du Camp and Bouilhet. 24 Aug/Sep 1847: Death of Charles Bovary. 14/24 Mar 1841: Emilie's feet wet; Henry disillusioned. SUN
25 28 18 15
5
May Get May Oct
Nov
Jan
Mar
Jan
21
31
2 12 22
4
15 25
(1, 348-54).
Jules's encounter with a 'Fox' who is halfwhite-half-black, then white with a black spot. Fox of 1840 was black with white spot. 1/11: Toussaint, fox hunting. Fires of dead leaves and smell of heather. Allusion to departure of Lucinde and to drowning with beggar girl, 23/ 4 Apr 1840. 22/10/1839: perruche rouge. 18/28 Mar 1841: Gosselins promise twice to return on this date, but no return narrated. 15/22 Apr/Oct 1840: Henry's return to Paris. 5/4/ 1848: Eve of Alfred's funeral: dog follows Gustave. 18/9/1949: Du Camp and Bouilhet discuss future subjects with Flaubert after rejection of TSA. 15/25 Jan/Feb/Mar 1841: the Aimable-Constance departs. 15/1/1846: AchilleCleophas dies: thigh abcess. 22/3/1846: Caroline-Josephine dies. 25 Sep = 5/15/25 Oct 1830: arrival/departure of Mme Gosselin. 5/ 10: mundus opened, hell let loose. Kalligeneia of Thesmorphoria (Scullard, 190-1). MON
e
Madame Bovary'
3 13 23
26 29 19
6 16 26
311
19/9/1846: Apparition at La Salette. 6/4/1848: Alfred's funeral. TUE
CHARTS: MADAME BOVARY
Day
Nov
Nov
Oct
CHARBOVARI'S DEBUT, 1827
(1, 575-7; NV,
May May Apr 132-41). 1
2
3
23
12
13
13
Charbovari produces charivari at his entrance 'vers la fin d'octobre, a l'epoque de la foire Saint-Romain'. 23/10/1849: Gustave bids farewell to Maurice. 23/10/4004 BC: Creation of world. 23/4/1843: Alhambra. 23/4/1848: tete de veau at Club de l'lntelligence. (23/4 = 3/5; 22 Oct = 1 Nov; 3/13 Nov)
2. Day
Nov
Oct
Dec
Jan
May Apr Jun Jul 20
12
30
22
5
I
TO LES BERTAUX ON BERCHTESNACHT, 1836/
1837/1838/ (i, 578-9; NV, 150-6). 11 p.m. summons to Les Bertaux 6 leagues away. 11.15: moon will rise in 2 hrs, at 1.15 a.m. Charles will leave at 3 a.m., to arrive at daybreak. Heloise would prefer that Charles left after sunrise (mauvaises rencontres) but Nastasie reports wealth of Rouaults. DV: 11 p.m. Charles will leave 3 hrs later at moonrise. Theodore Rouault breaks leg returning from Les Rois. (12/12/1821: night of Gustave's birth, at 4 a.m. 13/12, but date registered 12/ 12) (Anastasia: 22/12 Gk; 25/12 Lat). No snow! Berchtesnacht = St Lucia = St Ursula. 15/1: death
of Achille-Cleophas. 5/1: God's Gift Day: water to wine (Theodore) (Pliny, 1, 359). 21 31
13 23 2
6 16
3 a.m. Charles leaves, rain stops, moon rises. Sleepy Charles gets lost by 1 league, so total journey is 8 leagues (= Hirondelle's). 7 a.m. chimes: Charles late. Sun rises as Charles
312 Day
3
Diachronic and synchronic charts Nov
Dec
Jan
TO LES BERTAUX ON BERCHTESNACHT, 1836/
May Apr Jun
Jul
1837/1838/ (1, 578-9; NV, 150-6)
1
Oct
22
14 24 3
7 17
enters house. Wolves roaming. DV: Charles leaves at 4 a.m. Wakes to find rain stopped and day beginning to break. Leafless apple trees. Horse makes grand e'cart entering farm. Mother died 2 years ago. NV, 37: 'matinee d'octobre'. 1821: Gustave born 4 a.m. Charles returns next day, though he said he would return three days later. (7/17 Jan 1584; 22 Oct = 1 Nov 1587)
3Day
Dec Dec Jan Jan Jun Jul
Feb ROUAULT WALKS AGAIN, 1836/1837/1838 (i, 580; Aug NV, 157).
6
6
28
21
16
16
18
11
After 46 days, Theodore Rouault walks again. (6/1 + 46 = 21/2; 13/12 + 46 = 28/1; 21/10 + 46 = 6/12 (Dec = Jan) (11/21 Feb 1583)
4Day
1
Mar
MARCH VISIT TO LES BERTAUX, 1836/1837/1838 (I, 500; NV, I57-8).
20
NV, 158: 'la (tiede chaleur) molle de mars'. Time of melting snow. Emma's ombrelle.
3i 21
5Day
Sep Mar Aug Feb
BOVARY PARENTS LEAVE TOSTES, 1836/1837/1838 (i, 580; NV, l6l).
Bovary says Heloise is a haridelle 'dont les harnais ne valaient pas la peau'. Departure 8 days before Heloise dies. 9/3/1796: Napoleon marries Josephine de Beauharnais. 8 days
'Madame Bovary3
313
earlier, when notary decamped, marriage was nearly 18/13 months old (5-month discrepancy).
6. Day Jul
Jan
Aug
Apr
Feb
DEATH OF HELOISE, 1836/1837/1838 (1, 580-1;
Sep Oct Mar NV, 161-2).
1
6
16 26
3
16 26
One week after Bovary parents leave, Heloise spits blood while hanging out washing. (At time of notary's departure, marriage nearly 18/13 months. Now 14 months.)
2
7
17 27
4
iy 27
Heloise dies six weeks before Rouault brings payment and turkey, after 14 months of marriage. jVF, 23: after 2 years of marriage. Death of Romulus: 17/2 = 7/7. 17/2/1822: Veronique-Adelphine Couturier born (Bopp, 14).
Day
Nov
Sep
Sep
Feb
Mar/ CHARLES RETURNS TO LES BERTAUX, 1836/1837/
Aug Apr 1838 (1, 581; NV, 162-4).
I 20
20
31
20
Rouault brings payment and turkey 6 weeks after Heloise's death. Invites Charles to return; says rabbit hunting after harvest. Beau temps /printemps soon.
22
22
I
22 /
2 21
21
21
Charles returns to flowering peartrees and oestrus signs, 'comme la veille, comme il y avait cinq mois'! 'Le mois d'avril commencait', 'cet intervalle oublie'. Thorntree is green, primeveres in yard.
(31/3 = 1/11 by Charles's intervalle oublie). Era of Constantinople: 21 Mar = 1 Apr = 1 Sep. 16/26 Mar calendar change: 22 Mar = 1 Apr.
314
Diachromc and syiwhronic charts 8.
Day
Feb
Mar Aug
AUGUST VISIT TO LES BERTAUX, 1836/1837/1838
May (1, 581-2; NV, 166-7). 20 21
Day
Oct
20 31 21
31
Sep/ Sep/Sep/
Harvest is over at end of August. Emma offers Charles a drink and speaks of her dead mother: first Friday of month also 1st of month: Friday 1/1/1836.
GHARLES PROPOSES, 1836/1837/1838 (1, 582; NV,
Oct 38
Oct Oct 169-70). 37 3 6
1
28
29
30
2
29
30
1
3
30
1
2
1
2
4
28 30 29
At opening of hunting season or Vepoque de la saint-Michel, Charles spends three days at Les Bertaux. FRI SAT
Charles leaves Sunday night because Monday is market day in Tostes. Waits 30/49 minutes for flapping shutter. Thinks of 'la mort d'Hippolyte' while waiting. Returns to check movement of shutter, then leaves (vue basse). SUN
9 a.m. Charles returns. Wedding at end of his 3 first year of widowhood, 'au commencement du printemps / vers le printemps de l'annee MON prochaine'.
10 Day
Oct
Jun Jun
Apr Apr Mar Mar WEDDING OF GHARLES AND EMMA, 1837/ 1838/ May Sep Feb 1839(1,583-5; NV, 170-8).
14 17 24
14
24 1
3
14 25 15
27
37 guests remain 18 hours at table (1837)743 for 16 hrs; 47 places have been set. Formal blouses green instead of blue. Guests shorn like sheep at la saint-Jean. Bles verts, oats, colza
already yellow, thistles, straw. No fish/vegeta-
'Madame Bovary'
15 18 25 16 19 26
315
4
17
bles at feast, which lasts until evening. Moon up all night. DV: herbes rudes, oats. Solstice also. 24/3/1846: Charles remembers nuit conjugate. 24/3/1837: Good Friday. 24/3/1839: Palm Sunday.
25
2 4 5
25 26 28
Metamorphosis of Charles overnight: depucelage. Annunciation and Hilaria.
26
3 5 5 6 6
26 i6 16 27 27 17 17 29
Charles and Emma leave for Tostes. Theodore thinks of his snowy Christmastime wedding 23 years ago (soon 25). Emma's brother would be 28/30 soon (illegitimate). Arrival at Tostes vers six heures. Blue coat, peau de bique, porte bdtarde. Espalier of apricots, thin eglantine, young thornbush, pommiers, rosier, juliennes for Fete-Dieu. Charles thinks Emma is 18. Charles 3 years at Tostes. 26/3/1837: Easter. Dinner isn't ready, cf. return from ball. Heloise's bouquet. (16/26 Mar 1631).
l
9
Day
Aug
Jul
Feb
Apr 196-7).
17
7
JULY STORM AT TOSTES, 1837/1838/1839 (JVV,
Storm. Asparagus flourishing, dahlia trainers knocked down, juliennes defleuries, honeysuckle fragrant. Cow watches Emma, snails on plaster cure. Charles returns at 11 p.m. Colza very late this year; 'beaucoup de mans cet automne'.
12. Day
May Aug
9 19
May Aug
9 5 5 19 15 13
WALK WITH DJALI, 1837 (1, 589; NV, 200-1).
Djali is gift from gamekeeper Charles has treated; has red velvet collar with name on it. Ravenelles, wheat fields, poppies, nettles. '- Pourquoi, mon Dieu, me suis-je mariee?' 19/5: Legion d'Honneur (1802). 15/8: Awarded under Second Empire.
3i 6
Diachronic and synchronic charts
'3Day
Sep
Apr
i
Oct/ Oct/ Nov Nov
2
2
3
12
Oct/
Nov
37
38
4
3
3 4 5
4 5 6
9
1837/1838/1839
Wednesday 3 p.m.: departure for La Vaubyessard. Arrival at nightfall. Cows. Arbustes, rhodo-
14
13
dendrons, seringas, boules de neige in leaf. Portrait
31
3°
7 P- m - dinner served: violets and camellias on table; draped statue on stove. Quails, pomegranates, ananas. Flowering magnolia. Cavalier en habit bleu. Gossip: Hector and Leonie. Midnight: glass smashed, cf. Alfred's death. 1/3-5 Oct: Thesmophoria. Eleusinian Mysteries at c. autumn equinox: return/rape of Persephone. 26 Mar/3 April 1840: Renaud Ball. 26/3/ 1846: Emma's funeral. 23/3 = 3/4: Emma eats arsenic, 23 Mar 1846 (EoC) WED
4 2
BALL AT LA VAUBYESSARD, (i, 589—93; NVy 203—21).
3 5 4 13 15 14 30
1
31
4 14
6
16
5
31
2
1
dates: 20/10/1587, 29/5/1692, 23/1/1693; 17/ 7/1587, 23/9/1695.
Midnight: cavalier en habit bleu receives note in his hat while lady smells violets, ih: supper. 3I1: cotillion starts. Waltz with vicomte. Dark rainy night until petit jour. Fires of dead leaves through blue glass. Swans. Sight of vicomte and porte-cigares. Heather and fires of dead leaves. Apple smell announces winter. Sunset just before moonrise: full moon. Arrival home igh: Nastasie dismissed. Full moon = 1838. Dinner isn't ready, cf. time of arrival in Yonville. 24/3/1846: Emma dies. THU Long day: Emma asks who put such a distance between Wednesday morning and this evening: un trou dans sa vie (5/15 October 1582: first introduction of Gregorian calendar), FRI
'Madame Bovary'
317
14. Day
Feb
Apr
Apr
Mar
Aug
Sep
Sep
May VILLE, 1839/1841 (1, 597-603; NV, 237-60).
Jul
FLORAL ANNUNCIATION AND MOVE TO YON-
Jul Sep
Nov Nov Sep 20
10 20
7
4
II 21
8
i
21
5
28
12 22
2
22
9
6
29
3
23 30 25
I3
23
IO
7
27 24 25
27 17 22 12
28 18
Emma pricks fingers on wedding bouquet, and Berthe is born same day (4 Apr/Jul). 27 Mar Sep = 4Apr/Oct. 4/4/1841: Palm Sunday. SAT Era of Constantinople: 21 Mar = 1 Apr/Sep. 28 Mar = 8 Apr/Sep. Tostes departure March/May / apres Pdques. 11 Apr 1841/31 Mar 1839: Easter. MON Arrival in Yonville. NV, 27: 'vers le mois d'avril'. jVF, 62: 'temps d'avril terre seche bourgeons'. JVF, 64: one year before Leon leaves. Cattle in pastures, blonde fields of wheat, Constantinople (Era 30/3 = 10/4) G-M, 17: first days of April. Twilight ends just after i8h: Feb. Moon up after 21/22I1. Artemise and Hippolyte 13/8, 23/12. Wheat fields: July. Nov, 1840: Lyon floods. Escape of Djali; cure smashed. Homais notices Emma's pregnancy; tartan of Clemence Daviou 23/30 Mar 1847. Swallows arrive at Annunciation, 25/3 (M. 202); 25/2 (Fasti, 119). Eve of market day (Mon/Tue): 23 = 22.
14 24
11
4 8
24 31
MON/TUE
Leon sees Emma en peignoir. Market day: Tue in NV, Wed in DV. TUE/WED
318
Day
1
Diachronic and synchronic charts
Jun
4
Mar
Apr
BERTHE BOVARY BORN, 1841
Jun
Jul
63).
27 24 25
4
(1, 604;
NV,
266,
Berthe born c. 6 a.m. as sun is rising, 9 months after anniversary of ball. Charles said birth early June. 4/6/1843: Gustave's cousin Olympe gave birth to Emilie Bonenfant, Sunday (Q, 978). Charles wants Emma; his mother Olympe. Sunrise time impossible for June/July, but fits April; gestation period July. 4/7: la sainte-Berthe. Lavatio dates: 27/3 = 4 / 4 . SUN
16. Day
May
Aug
VISIT TO NURSE'S HOUSE, 1841
(1, 605-7;
NV
>
Nov Feb
269-75).
1
23
23
Bovary parents leave Yonville one month after baptism.
2
24 14
24 14
Walk with Leon to Mere Rollet's house. Emma doesn't consult her own body to see if six weeks of Virgin have elapsed. 14/2: 1st Presentation. Privet, veroniques en fieur, walnut tree, thorn-hedge, lettuce, lavender, sweet peas, wallflowers, clematis, honeysuckle, vaches embricolees rubbing horns. Bovet, 36: veroniques bloom from end July.
'7Day
Nov
LEON RECEIVES TAPIS FOR HIS FETE (I, 608;
NV,
281). 10
Leon finds carpet when he returns home on la saint-Leon. Had given Charles tete phrenologique on 4/11. Emma's gift of carpet causes 2 weeks' gossip in Yonville.
'Madame Bovary'
319
18. Day
Nov Nov LEON STEALS EMMA'S GLOVE, 1841 (NV, 282). 22
Day
Sunday evening soiree at Homais's: yellow glove, odour of violets. NV, 63: 'faire comprendre qu'il se br ... avec ce gant'. SUN
21
Mar Aug Feb LINEN FACTORY AND LHEUREUX's FIRST VISIT, Sep Mar 1842 (i, 6o8-IO; NV, 284-94). 30
20 2O
20 20 10
31
21 21
21 21
II
II
Visit to linen factory on snowy Sunday afternoon. Napoleon plays in lime pit. Emma realises that Leon is in love with her, cf. Jocelyn/Werther. SUN Lheureux wears mourning crepe for dead wife. Gives Felicite scarf with Guizot and la reine Pomare on it. Lheureux mentions Tellier. Leon visits: ignored by Emma. 11/21 Feb 1840/1848: failed rendezvous granted. 21 Feb/31 Mar: Rouault pays bill, sends turkey. (11/21 Feb 1583). MON
20.
Day
Mar Apr VISIT TO Jun Jul 300-8).
BOURNISIEN, 1842
Primeveres e'closes, warm 1
24 22 21
/
(i, 61I-I3; NV,
wind, plates-bandes
labourees, leafless poplars. Cattle in pasture and Bournisien's cow swollen. Follows tale of La Guerine cf. La Barbee then i Apr swollen cow in BeP. Bournisien says beginning of spring now. Berthe's slashed cheek after reference to baptism. Wedding anniversary.
320
Diachronic and synchronic charts 21.
Day Jul
Mar Feb
Jun
1
29 27 26
2
30 28 27
3
l
Apr
DEPARTURE OF LEON, 1842 (1, 614-15; NV,
Aug Jul 312-21). Sep 16
6
17
7
8
3i
6 July 1846: Alfred Le Poittevin married. 6 April 1848: Alfred's funeral. Storm: rain falls on leafy poplars, pink acacia flowers fall. Summer and spring. Leon's mother refers to 6 weeks before holidays. NV, 63: one year after Emma's arrival in Yonville. NV, 72: pluie d'ete. NV, 474: Emma says he left in spring. Death of Romulus: 7/7 = 17/2. Dark cloud for Emma cf. aftermath of ball (5/10). 8/7/1842: Total solar eclipse.
22.
Day
Sep Jul Aug RODOLPHE'S FIRST APPEARANCE, 1840/1841/1842 Sep May (1,617-18; NV, 328-35). Jul Apr Apr 27 28 29
3 4 5
NV, 64: about a week before the Cornices. Mme Bovary mere leaves after visit of 3 weeks/ almost 3 weeks. Market day. Affair '2 years' from here (1, 680). Late July 1846: meets Louise Colet; 3/8: first night. 3/5/1814: Louis XVIII arrives Paris; Napoleon arrives Elba. 'Ma femme', 'escalier'. WED
23Day
Aug May Aug
GOMICES AGRIGOLES 1841 AND 1842 (1, 618-26;
Nov Feb NV, 336-72). (1853). 1
12 22
5
5
15
15
NV, 64: week after Rodolphe's first visit. NV, 80: 1/3/12 Aug. 5/8: Saint-Ton, Saint-Abel.
15/8: Assumption, Fete Napoleon.
'Madame Bovary3
321
13 23
6 16
6 16
Homais writes article for Le Fanal de Rouen.
14 24
7 17
y iy
Homais's newspaper article mentions 'nos immortelles phalanges'. jVF, 80: 'le 12 aout sera . . . dans les fastes'.
24. Day
Sep
Aug
Mar Feb
Oct
Sep
Apr
Mar 626-9; NV, 372-83).
23 13
26 16
3
26 16
2
24 14
27 17
4
27 17
3
25 15
28 18
5
28 18
1
RODOLPHE'S RETURN AND FOREST RIDE, 1842
(1,
Rodolphe visits Emma the day after receiving Charles's note. Nightfall just before Charles's 6 p.m. return. Rodolphe and narrator say Rodolphe's visit yesterday: denial of amazone time. Tree trunk, violets, heather. River of milk, prolonged cry: Iacchic. NV, 91: going to the Devil. Eleusinian Mysteries/Thesmophoria, cf. Moloch sacrifice, 4 Apr/Oct. 27 Mar/4 Apr 1840: Bois de Boulogne ride in ESi; disaster. 4/6 Oct: Napoleon-Josephine liaison begins. 17/27 Feb/Mar: death of Heloise. Return to forest, bed of dead leaves, Emma puts violets in bosom after kissing them. Cornices soon 2 months ago. Correspondence begins. (25/9 = 5/10/1583)
25Day
1
Dec
Dec
Dec
EMMA ENCOUNTERS BINET, 1842
Jan
Jan
Jun
388-92).
31
29
2g
(1, 630-1; NV,
Morning, Vers la fin de decembre', Binet poaching wild duck. Berthe home for past year: impossible. Emma's name (29/6) in river; leafy poplars impossible during visits to La Huchette at this point. Night of torture at Homais's.
322
Diachronic and synchronic charts
26. Day
Mar Apr
Feb 21 31
Apr
Sep Jul 1
/
LETTER FROM THEODORE ROUAULT, 1842 AND
1843 (1, 632-3; NV, 396-9). Time of turkey as souvenir of his jambe remise. First turkey 31/3/1836. One day for transport: rayon d'avril. Emma's love for Berthe v. slashed cheek one year ago.
27. Apr Apr
Day
Jul
Sep 41
Apr Apr
Jul
Apr Apr
P/EP-BOT OPERATION, 1842 AND 1843 (i, 633-4;
Jul
42
Sep 43
NV, 4OI-4).
Charles cuts the tendon d'Achille. 21/4/1851: Death of Hippolyte Colet. 23/4/1809: Napoleon wounded Achilles' tendon on la saintAchille at Ratisbon cf. Homais's painting. 11/4/ 1821: Emile Hamard born. 11/4/1814: Fontainebleau abdication. 22/4/1843: Les Burgraves ends, Lucrece opens: Classicism defeats Romanticism. 22/7/1832: death of 'Napoleon II' on anniversary of Baylen. 11/9/1842: arise nerveuse: 12/9/1842: elopement date. (1/12 July 1700; 2/ 12 July 1584) TUE
Sep
13
12
//
23
22
21
2
1
1
3
28. Day
Oct
Nov
May May THIGH AMPUTATION, 1842 AND 1843 (*> 636—7;
Jan Aug Aug NV, 408-14). Sep Dec Dec 31
1 I
12 12
13 13
2
22
23
12
13
Saturnalias of curiosity as Canivet operates. Emma and Rodolphe reconciled after 6 weeks' sulking. Hippolyte's scream that of slaughtered beast. 12/5: saint-Achille, Toussaint. 13/5: Toussaint (31/10 = 1/11). 13/8: Diana and Hippolyte. 23/12: Saturnalia. Diana. 13/8: la saintHippolyte. 12/13 May = 1 Nov (Toussaint). 12/13
'Madame Bovary'
323
Aug = 1 / 2 Sep (1610 calendar change). 2 = 13 Sep (13/14 Sep change). 13/23 Sep/Dec: Saturnalia (23/12). Foins coupes. 12/22 Aug 1842: Rodolphe hunts to let pear ripen. 1/9: Era of Constantinople = 1/11 Toussaint cf. Lheureux's 1 Sep/Nov swindle. 2/9/1843: Emma's last rendezvous with Rodolphe. 23/8/1847: Charles meets Rodolphe at Argueil fair; envies him. 12/13 Aug: Hercules/Melkart; Julien's parricide (11, 183-5). (23 Aug/2 Sep 1610; 3/14 Sep 1752; 21 March/ 1 Apr/Sep)
29Day
Jul
Jul
Sep/
Jun/
LHEUREUX'S TRAP FAILS, 1843
Oct Jul
420-2).
(1, 638-9; NV,
1
6
7
26
26
Lheureux brings whip Emma has ordered for Rodolphe.
2
7
8
27
27 17
Lheureux brings 270-franc bill. Emma can't pay. (17/27 June 1585) 17/6 on Lheureux's list.
3
8
9
28
28
4
9
10
29
29 19
5
I0
11
30
30
6
11
12
1
/
7
12
13
2
2 22
Lheureux returns. Threatens to ask Charles for whip. Thinks he has Emma trapped. Derozerays pays 15 napoleons. 29/6/1815: End of 100 Days. (1/12 July 1700) Emma pays Lheureux, who suggests arrangement. Amor nel cor and soon 3 years since porte-cigares: 2/7 = 2/10. This makes the year 1842 in NV. (2/12 July 1584).
324
Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts
Nov
Jan
Sep i
i
May Mar Oct/ FELICITE'S VISITOR AND DECISION Aug Feb Nov 1842/1843 (1, 639-40; NV, 425-8). Sep Aug/ Aug Sep 11/12
II
30
31
20
TO ELOPE,
Charles's mother sees Felicite with 40-yearold man in blue coat and casquette. Hallowe'en.
12
I
2
2
12/13 3i
12
21
/
13
Day Jan
Sep
Sep
Sep
Quarrel on day herd returns for winter quartering. Emma says 3 years of patience, 10 months of suffering (1842). In 1843, says 4 years. Elopement decision. Market day: Wed in DV, Tue in NV. Wed 1/11/1843; Tue 1/11/ 1842. Same date as Hippolyte's thigh amputation. Toussaint. Rodolphe examines Emma's face to see if she suspects.
FAILED
ELOPEMENT
IN 1842/1843/1841 (NV,
Dec Dec Dec 432-49). Mar Mar Mar
Jun
Jun Jun
4i
43
42
11
9
10
21
19
20
1
2
3
12 22
10 20
// 21
13 23
11 21
12 22
Emma's last night with Rodolphe. Leafless poplars, perfume of syringas, falling ripe peach. Red, round moon rises. Midnight: Emma says 'demain'. Poplars and moonrise: 10/20 Dec. Bovet, 36: Syringas June not Sep. 20-21/6/1792: flight to Varennes. (10/20 Dec 1582) SAT Tete de be'lier. spring equinox. Cornfields full: June solstice. Cf. Emilie's first visit to Henry's room 22/12/1839. Emma sees Charles in bedroom on way to attic. Later says he was at Cafe Francois, CRISE NERVEUSE. Homais refers to Morel's epileptic greyhound: 1/1/1844. (22/ 12/1582 = 1/1/1583). SUN Elopement scheduled. 13/23 Mar/Sep 1841: Elopement of Henry and Emilie in ESi. 23/9/
'Madame Bovary3
325
1810: Elisa Foucault born. 12/12/1842: Gustave Flaubert's official majority. G-M, 45: 'lundi 23 septembre'. MON
3*Day
1
Aug
Apr
Jun
Feb
Oct
Mar Dec
Sep
23
2
2
2
13 23
13 23
22
24
25
3
4
3 14 14
3 14
24 23
24
4 J 15 5
4 l 15 5
25 24
25
FAILED ELOPEMENT 1843 (1, 641-5).
Last meeting wth Rodolphe. At midnight, Emma says 'demain'. Seasonal features make this a coincidence of the solstices and equinoxes, and Era of Constantinople creates coincidence of 2/Sep/Apr and 22 Mar. (23/8 = 2/9/1610) SAT CRISE NERVEUSE 3 years before last meeting with Rodolphe and taking of arsenic. 24/8 1847: Death of Charles. 24/3/1846: Death of Emma. 1, 680: NV, 596: Emma claims infatuation lasted 2 years. (3/14 Sep 1752; 14/24 Dec 1615) SUN Elopement scheduled for Monday 4 Sep 1843: death of Leopoldine Hugo while her father was on holiday with his mistress. 15 Aug/Sep: Louise Colet's birthday. (15/25 Dec 1583; 25 Sep/5 Oct 1583) MON
33Day
Nov Oct 42 42 3
24
Oct 43
16
CHARLES'S NURSING OF EMMA STOPS, 1843 (h 645; NV, 448).
1842
AND
Charles stays by Emma's side for 43 days straight. (5/15 Oct 1582)
326
Diachronk and synchronic charts 34-
Day
May May Oct Get
Nov Nov EMMA'S RELAPSE AND CHARLES'S LOANS, 1842/3 Aug Mar Sep (1,645-6; NV, 449-51).
12
31
13
21
/ 2
22
12
23
13
Charles forces Emma into tonnelle: relapse. Fires of dead leaves on horizon: Samhain. Day Emma learns of Felicite's nocturnal visitor. Lheureux swindles Charles: / Sep substituted for / Nov. 2/9/1843: Time loop creates coincidence with last rendezvous.
35Day
Apr Apr
Jul
Oct
Aug Aug
Aug Aug
27 iy 7
24 25 14 15 4 5
Feb May Mar 43
28 18
Feb May Mar 45
25
8
Aug Aug
LUCIE DE LAMMERMOOR AND FIACRE SEDUC-
Feb TION, 1843/1844/1845 (1, 648-60; NV, 462-511). May Mar 44
26 16
6
Literary discussion in Yonville: excommunication of actors cf. Moliere 17/2. Homais says Lagardy will give 1/3 performances. (5/15 Aug 1583; 14/24 Feb 1583) THU Charles and Emma meet Leon at performance of Lucie. Death of Bovary pere after repas bonapartiste. It's 2 years since Leon left Yonville (= 7 Apr/Jul 1844). Charles says Emma can return Monday/Sunday. 15/8: Birthday of Napoleon and Walter Scott. 26/3: la saintHerbland
29 19
26 16
9
6
30
27 17
20 10
7
27 17
7
28 18
8
FRI
Leon visits Emma in La Croix-Rouge. Pretence that there was a performance of Lucie that Emma planned to attend with Lormeau couple. Nightfall c. 8p.m. fits early July rather than mid-August. Death of Romulus: 7 Jul = 17 Feb/Aug: Leon left Yonville 3 years ago. SAT Cathedral and fiacre: violets, seduction. Hirondellelezves at 3.53 p.m. 27/3/1810: Napoleon's coach hurries to consummation with MarieLouise. 20/8/1807: conception of Louis Napoleon. Yonville: jam-making moment. News of father's death and VAmour ... Conjugal
'Madame Bovary3
327
cf. N-D de Paris episode 17/2/1841 in ESi. Censorship and lying about age: Bovary pere older than 58. 28/8/1851: Lucie played in Rouen. 17/2: Fornacalia, stultorum feriae. 3i 21 II
22 12
28 18
29 J
8
9 9
Mme Bovary mere arrives. NV, 108: Plans say return to Rouen here (19/5: Legion d'Honneur). 2/3-day stay. MON
19
20 10
Mourning arrangements made. Lheureux arrives to discuss renewal of Charles's billet. Proposes arrangement and power of attorney to Emma. TUE
9
36. Day
Sep
Sep
Aug
Mar Mar 24
4 25
4
5 26 16
Emma leaves for 3-day honeymoon with Leon at Hotel de Boulogne/Bourgogne.
3
14
4 25 15
They find ruban de soie ponceau: Adolphe/Rodolphe. 25/8/1848: Du Camp awarded Legion d'Honneur. 15/8: Legion d'Honneur awarded under Empire. Moon appears.
26 16
Emma returns to Yonville. Leafy poplars at this time. NV, 105: finds Mme Bovary mere on return (plans).
5
5
16
THREE-DAY HONEYMOON IN ROUEN (I, 661; JVV,
513-16).
37^ Day
Nov
EMMA'S MUSICAL ARDOUR, 1844/1845 (1,662; NV,
May 520-2). 1
21
Emma complains of musical deterioration Vers le commencement de Phiver'.
2
22
Emma plays piano badly, but says music lessons too dear. Artists without reputations.
3
23
Charles finds 'une fameuse maitresse': 'Un nom comme DubreuiP (Felicie Lempereur). 23/11/1829: Elisa marries Judee.
328
Diachronic and synchronic charts 38.
Day
Oct
Dec Jan
Apr Jun Jul 1
20
12
5
Dec
BLIND MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE, 1844/5 (*>
Jun 664-5; ;vv, b?>l-Z)5
Emma wakes in dark. Sees petit jour and Vaurore before 6I130. Fine rain. Rouen waking up on arrival: nh! Holiday for school boarders. i6h time to part, but they delay. Hairdresser visit as night falls, actors called for performance preparation. Emma offered tickets for Saturday's masked ball. Blind Man: rags/carapace; blue pants black with rain. Leprosy of skin/ moisture of his coat. Pointed face and teeth, round hat. Body 'comme une tete guillotinee'. THU
39 Day
Oct
Jan
Dec
CHARLES TO ROUEN, 1844/1845 (1, 667-8; JVV,
547-8). 1
20
5
12
2
21
6
13
Berchtesnacht/Ste Lucie/Ursule: Charles leaves Yonville for Rouen, 23I1. THU Charles arrives Rouen 2h. Searches for Emma. Sees her at daybreak in street, yet it's c. 2h. Gustave born, 4h. FRI
40. Day
1
Oct/ Mar/ Mar Nov Apr Feb Aug/ Sep
31
30
Mar Feb
EMMA'S SUFFERING AND DEATH, 1846 (1,672-89; NV, 569-630). HOLY WEEK.
9
ig
Document delivered at Yonville. Masked ball, Rouen.
10 12
20 22
19 Ventose iv: Napoleon m. Josephine (9/3/ 1804). 19/3: la sainte-Josephine, Minerva's birthday, Louis XVIII flees, 1815. 19/2/1833: Victor Hugo spends night with Juliette Drouet instead of attending masked ball; 1847: hotel THU scene, Louise Colet.
'Madame Bovary3 31
10 11 1 3
20 21 2 3
Daybreak on theatre steps. Grey document. Last interview with Lheureux: 'il est trop tard!' J 79^ Italian campaign begins; 1815 100 Days (PALM SUNDAY)
1
11
21
12
12 14
22 24
2 13
12 13
22 23
*5
2
13 i4 i6
23 24 26
4
14
1
17
5
24 25 27
329
FRI
Hareng in attic: rattling window and postmortem corpse. Lheureux's lie claims this as last meeting. Era of Constantinople: 21/3 = 1/4 — i/g. 2173/1804: Civil Code and Due d'Enghien To Rouen for bankers. Leon and Morel; cathedral and vicomte. Blind Man, Napoleonic Homais and cheminots: Christmas nights. Crusades and scrofula. Emma's last coin. 3 P- m - mentioned: death of CarolineJosephine, 1846. SUN Binet's oeuvre nearing completion. Snow melting, night falls, globules. 3 years since 3/9 1843 (Constantinople). Emma says affair lasted 2 years to 3/9/1843. Dead leaves, fireworks: Flaubert's crisis. Arsenic, inky taste, metallic vapour. Yonville wakes through night. JVF, 32: 'le 23 au matin elle fut reprise de vomissemens'. MON Berthe: Rois, NYD, Mid-Lent, Lolo. Lariviere's lunch. Justin drops plates. Last rites: Charles thinks of nuit conjugate, candle is la Chandeleur (NV, 612). Mirror, Blind Man's song. Emma dies. Tuvache passes. 3 coffins. i8h: Hirondelle. Homais and Bournisien keep wake. ( 2 4 / 3 LAST SUPPER, FAILED WAKE, JUDAS KISS) TUE
5 16 2
15 16 18
25 26 28
Emma's yellow skin and spider's web. 1I130/ 2h: murmur of river. Daybreak: Mother arrives. Afternoon: Berthe. Evening: laying out: ventre trop gros. B&H again: bees. (JVF, 620: la semaine de Pasques). Wedding day again. (25/3 CRUCIFIXION and HILARIA)
6 17
3
16 17
26 27 29
WED
Charles's shriek of horror at Emma's face: lock of hair. 4 a.m. food and gaiety (Homais and Bournisien). Nailing of coffin: 2 hrs. Emma in green velvet (capuchon): cet horrible baiser. Rouault learned of death 36 hours later: covered 15 lieues in 45 hours, noticed green
330 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Oct/ Mar/ Mar Mar Mar Oct/ Mar/ Mar EMMA'S SUFFERING AND DEATH, 1846 Nov Apr Feb Feb NV, 569-630). HOLY WEEK. Aug/ Sep
(1,672-89;
wheat not rolled. Funeral: six coffin-bearers in blue redingotes, Lheureux's time lie: 20/3 = 21/ 3. Binet absent. THU 18
7
17 18
27 28
4
20
30
Rodolphe and Leon sleep. Justin weeps. Lestiboudois's potatoes. Berthe brought home. Leon stays in his room for two days. (27/3: FRI
RESURRECTION a n d LAVATIO).
41. Day Sep Feb Feb Aug CHARLES'S DEATH Dec Mar Mar Sep NV, 64O-2).
AND AUTOPSY,
1847 (i, 692;
2 13
13
23 13
23 13
Charles sees Rodolphe at Argueil market. A hot August day {NV, 641). Charles would like to be Rodolphe. 13/8/1840: Morel would like to be Henry. 23/9/1810: Elisa Foucault born. (23 Aug = 2 Sep 1610)
3 14
14
24 14
24 14
Charles dies 18 mths after Emma {NV, 642). Berthe finds him at 7 p.m. Jasmine and lilies in flower, vine leafy. Fourth anniversary of Emma's crise nerveuse of 1843. (3 = La saint-Barthelemy.
l
^9^llb2)
24/9/768: Death of Pepin, father of Charlemagne. 24/8/1847: Death by suicide of ChoiseulPraslin. 24/8/1848: Decree on postal system. 4 15
15
25 15
25 Canivet performs autopsy on Charles and 15 finds nothing {NV, 642). 25/8/1753: Buffon's discourse: 'Le style, c'est l'homme meme'. 25/ 8/1848: Du Camp decorated; Flaubert breaks with Louise Colet. 4/9: failed elopement.
5 16
16
26 16
26 16
Canivet performs autopsy on Charles 36 hours after death. Finds nothing (1, 692). 26/8/1850: Louis-Philippe dies. 5/9/1840: Elisa marries Schlesinger.
'Salammbo3
331
SALAMMBO SYNCHRONIG CHARTS
Day
Day Apr
ofj
A/M A /M BANQUET AND JOURNEY TO SICC A (1,694-702).
Oct 0/N 0/N
1
13
23 24
25
2
14
24 25
26
3
15
25 26
27
Banquet at Megara. Robigalia. Venus Erycina. 25/4/1848: Rouen workers dissatisfied with results of 23/4 election. 1, 517: Rubigo la deesse de la Rogne. 1834: Pacification of Lyon, beginning of Paris insurrection. 23/8: live fish sacrificed at Volcanalia. Matho wounded in arm. 23/10/1827: Charbovari. 13/4/1861: American Civil War. Matho sees veil at sunrise. 26/4/1821: Napoleon saw Josephine beckoning him in dream at sunrise. Black ram: precession of equinoxes. 26/4/1848: Demonstration at Rouen Town Hall. 14/4/1834: Rue Transnonain. 300 Baleares arrive in Carthage at night. 27/ 4/1848: Rouen workers flew to arms. 27/4/ 1858: Flaubert in Carthage. 23/27 Apr: Aztec Toxcatl; la saint-Polycarpe/Floribert. 27/4/1829:
Juliet Herbert born (Oliver, 56). 26 26 27
28 28
17
28 28 29
29 29
18
30
30 30
19
CO CO
16
I
31 31 I
1/2
11/2 /
Mercenaries leave Carthage. Slaughter of Baleares who overslept. 28/4/48: Senard orders Gerard's troops to fire on workers. 28/8/1814: Napoleon boards Undaunted for Elban exile. Slaughter continues throughout the night. Zarxas leaves Carthage in morning. 29/4/ 1814: Marshals to Louis XVIII Legion d'Honneur under Restoration (Hugo, Lamartine, Vigny decorated 29/4). Barbarians reach river with rose laurels in middle of day. Walpurgisnacht: 30/4. Spendius' anguish is calmed on fourth day of journey. 1/5: Roman consuls take office: Hamilcar has advantage in peace negotiations until here.
*Crucified lions. Some Barbarians return to 2/3 Carthage. 2/5: Dos de Mayo and Tolentino (Murat): Apolline Flaubert dies. 20/4/1808:
332 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Day
Apr
ofj
Oct 0/N 0/N
A/M
A/M
BANQUET AND JOURNEY TO SICCA (1,694-702).
Napoleon III born, Bayonne trap. 2/5: original fete Napoleon. 20/4/1814: Cour des Adieux. 20/4/1848: Fete de la Fraternite. 20/4/ 1858: East wind stops progress (11, 708). 9
6
21
10
7
22
•Nothing whatever is said about this day. 3/5/ 2/3 3/4 1808: Reprisals for Dos de Mayo. 3/5/1814: Louis XVIII arrives at Tuileries as Napoleon arrives at Elba. 3/5: Chiron dies. 3/5/238 B.C. Flora's temple built in Rome. 3/5/1804: Senate decrees Napoleon Emperor. 21/4: Rome's birthday. Arrival at Sicca to welcome by prostitutes on 3/4 4/5 seventh day of journey. 4/5/1810: Walewski born. 4/5/1848: Republic proclaimed by elected representatives. 4/11/1848: Republican Constitution voted and declared. 4/5/1815 Napoleon disembarks at Elba. *N.B. The events of these days are mutually interchangeable. Narr'Havas's presence: 13 = 23 = 24 = 25 October/April.
2.
Day
1
Mar Sep
Nov
8 18
5 25
May Nov
7
ih 7O4-7)-
Hannon arrives. Spendius stirs up trouble. Zarxas tells of Baleares' slaughter. 15/5/1848: Huber stirs up protesters against Poland and Rouen massacres. 15/5: Birth and festival of Mercury, patron of lies and greed. (5/15 Nov 1583) Hannon flees; Barbarians leave for Carthage. Matho's tent is last to go. 1848: Luxembourg Commission dissolved. 16/5: Wounding of Set/Typhon (cf. 1, 458).
9 6 / 6 " 19 26
10
HANNON AT SICCA AND MARCH ON CARTHAGE
iy
Silent day. 17/5/1838: Death of Talleyrand (=10 Mar): this tallies with state of Roman
c
Day
Salammbo }
333
20
27
year in 241 B.C. 10 Mar/17 May: Battle of Aegates Is. (17/27 Nov 1583)
11 21
8 28
18
12 22
9 29
ig
Feb
Mar
Jun
GISGON'S
ARRIVAL
Aug
Sep
Dec
713-15).
(G-M,
Salammbo prays to Tanit and summons Schahabarim. 18/11: Birth of Nut/sunshade (Gi, 205). 21/9/1792: End of'slave style' time. 11/ 9/1802: Talleyrand's religious marriage. 21/9/ 1808: Talleyrand arrives at Erfurt. 8/11: mundus opened. 18/5/1804: Empire formally established. Salammbo and Schahabarim see Barbarians arrive. 19/5: Marshalate and Legion d'Honneur. 22/9: Adonis sacrificed: Mycale, Plataea (Green, 127); Talleyrand's fete. 22/9/1792: Year 1 of Republic begins.
AND
24-6:
IMPRISONMENT
(I,
TAMMOUZ = TIBBY =
ELOUL = SCHEBAZ = SIVANE)
1
10 20
10 20
10 20
II 21
II 21
// 21
12
12
12
22
22
22
13 2 3
13 2 3
13 2 3
Giscon arrives with interpreters and begins payment of Libyans. Exposes false veteran: Spendius rouses rest of Libyans. 20/6/1792: Invasion of Tuileries. 10/8/1792: Massacre of Swiss Guards. 10/12: Consuls' year began. 10/ 20 Dec 1848: Louis Napoleon elected and sworn in. Payment of Libyans continues. Spendius rouses Gauls. Obstinate Mercenaries penetrate Giscon's tent. Payment of Libyans continues. Zarxas asks about payment for his dead comrades at sunset. Giscon shuts himself in his tent. 12-13/ 6: Flaubert's prayer re writing Salammbo. 12/12: Birth of Alexander I (o.s.) Interpreters dead; Giscon arrested; war begins here. 13/6/49: Demonstrations over Italian expedition; 1800: tenebreuse affaire (Balzac). 13/ 12: births of Flaubert, Henri IV, Leon. 13/6/ 1564: Henri learns of mother's death; 13/6/ 1576: renounces Catholicism. 13/6/1800: tenebreuse affaire (vm, 692). 13/8/1792: Royal
334 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Feb
Mar Jun
Aug
Sep
Dec
GISCON'S ARRIVAL AND IMPRISONMENT (I,
713-15).
(G-M, 24-6:
TAMMOUZ = TIBBY =
ELOUL = SCHEBAZ = SIVANE)
family imprisoned. 23/6/1848: 'June Days' begin. 14 24
14 24
Aug
Mar Jun
Feb
Sep Dec
1
22
22
22
2
23
23
23
3
24
24
24
4
25
25
5
26
26
Day
14 24
Next morning, army feels languor. Matho visits Giscon's pit at night. 14/6: Marengo and Friedland.
THEFT OF THE ZAIMPH(I, 715-21).
Spendius asks about water supply. 1815: Fouche heads government commission; Napoleon abdicates. 1848: 'June Days' begin. G-M, 24: Tammouz = Tibby = Eloul. Trasimene. Matho swears by Chabar. 23/6/1848: Outbreak of insurrection; Cavaignac supreme commander of all forces. 23/6: death of 2 Hasdrubals (Fasti, 379). Entry via aqueduct. Theft of %aimph. Visit to Salammbo. 1812: Napoleon crosses Niemen. 1848 Pentarchy resigns. 1184 B C : Troy destroyed. Fire and water festivals.
Zaimph torn during escape. Feast and alliance 2^rr with Narr' Havas 25/6/1807: Niemen tent alliance. 25/6/1812: Crossing of Niemen continues. 25/6/1848: Suppression of main riots. 25/12: birth of Mithra (= 'contract' as abstract noun). 25/12/1560: Jeanne d'Albret abjures Catholicism. 26
Tent feast continues through night (holocaust offering). 26/6/1848: Rebels massacred after armistice. 26/6/1573: Henri de Navarre leads first cavalry charge. 26/9/1572: abjures Protestantism after la saint-Barthelemy.
e
Salammbo }
335
5Day
Mar
Nov
Sep
May
HANNONATUTIGA (i, 725-7).
Nov
1
7 17
4
14
2
8
5
15
3
9
6
16
4
10
7
iy
5
11
8
18
9
15
12
22
Hannon leaves Carthage on moonless night. 14/11: Achille Cleophas Flaubert born. Premierejournee. 2e journee: Hannon's intended (morning) arrival on date of his flight from Sicca. 9/9/1802: Talleyrand's marriage contract; 9/3/1797: Napoleon m. Josephine. je journee: Hannon arrives and wins battle, though thought to be dead. Talleyrand's marriage and death. Aegates Is and missing day at Sicca. Empress Catherine and Antoine de la Borderie. 3 Barbarians decapitated. Spendius' pig stratagem; Narr' Havas and Matho arrive; Hannon escapes in evening. 11-12/3 o.s.: Czar Paul murdered; Alexander becomes Czar 12/3. Narr'Havas is king of Numidians; signals Hannon but is not understood. 15/3: Murat Grand-Duke of Berg and Cleves; 6/9/1808: enters Naples as king. Henri: France/Navarre.
6. Day
Jan
Apr
Sep
Feb
HAMILCAR'S RETURN TO CARTHAGE (I, 728-40).
Jul
Oct
Mar
Aug
(G-M, 24: SCHEBAT = ELOUL).
Hamilcar returns. Hears news of Hannibal from Iddibal disguised as female slave. 14/2: la saint-Adolphe. 1/4: conception of Adolphe. H attends all-night meeting.
1
14 24
1
14 24
14 24
2
15 25
2
15 25
75 25
3
16 26
3
16 26
16 26
She-wolf howling (Lupercalia): Hannon accuses Hamilcar of wanting to be king. Hamilcar reunited with Salammbo. Inspection of domains. Decision to take command. Pliny, iv, 453: pomegranates can have 2nd flowering in winter. Hamilcar begins preparations for war.
336
Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts
Ki/ Tib
Jul Aug
29-30 20
Mar Sep
Dec Jun
BATTLE OF THE MACAR (I, 742-7). (G-M, 24: TIBBY = TAMMOUZ = ELOUL)
20
20
Matho tells Spendius he will do battle if
1
Hamilcar does not arrive at end of three days.
2
30-1
21
21
21
3
1-2
22
22
22
4
2-3
23
23
23
5
3-4
24
24
24
6
4-5
25
25
25
7
5-6
26
26
26
8
6-7
27
27
2J
9
7-8
28
28
28
10
8-9
29
29
2Q
2 Tibby: Feast of Dedication (Hanucah) ends. Matho gives Hamilcar 2 more days. Matho swore by Chabar. 23/6/1848: Cavaignac keeps troops in barracks: won't work for Executive Commission. Crossing of the Macar; west wind. 1812: Crossing of the Niemen. Anniversary of theft of %aimph. 1848: Exec Comm resigns. Flaubert writes '2 ans' in margin (G-M, 23). Matho leaves in morning; arrives by starlight; lost in dark. Ancients' custom of waking through solstices. Anniversary of tent feast/ alliance. Birth of Christ. Songs and coupes heurtees. v. 1, 714: drinking prohibited in Punic armies under pain of death. At dawn, Matho finds Spendius (= Fouche, died 26/12/1820). 2000 captives to Carthage: all-night prostitution, cf. Haloa: 26 Poseidon. Spendius' 'Evoe!' (Bacchus): Lenaea at winter solstice. Fortuna: 24/6 (slaves). Autharite won't exchange Giscon for Barbarian captives. Compitalia (Lares), cf. Pataeci gods. 27/9/1808: Interview at Erfurt: Alexander won't co-operate. Torture and killing of captives: populace united in act of revenge cf. 28/4 Baleares. Holy Innocents: unluckiest day of year. 28/6/ 1848 Cavaignac head of French govt. Great birds holding chunks of human flesh. North winds. Barbarian army departs. 29/6/ 1848: Senard minister. 29/6/1815: Napoleon leaves Malmaison for Rochefort/exile.
'Salammbo'
337
8. Day
Apr
Jan
Mar
Feb
Oct
Jul
Sep
Aug
1
2
15 2 5
15 2 5
15 2 5
2
3
16 26
16 26
16 26
Day
Oct Apr
1
2
22
22
22 12
2
3
23
23
23 13
3
1 4
24
24
24 14
Dec Jun Jan Jul
Sep Mar
'ZARXASBUVEURDE SANG'(1,749-50).
Mercenaries, adopting she-wolf standards, trap Hamilcar's army, then spend night feasting. 15 Jan/Feb: Lupercal. Time loop back to 2nd day follows. Mercenariess recognise Hamilcar, Carthaginians Giscon in hippo crown. Zarxas drinks blood of Sacred Legionary, then invites dead companions to share feast. 16-17/1/1793: vote on regicide. 26/2/1814: return from Elba. 17/ 7/1789: Louis XVI and cocarde tricolore; Artois emigrates. 17/7/1791: Massacre du Champ de Mars. 17/7/1793: Chalier executed. 3/4/1848: Alfred Le Poittevin dies.
'sous LA TENTE'(1, 754-63). Salammbo embraces serpent (evening). Taanach mentions wedding day. 22/3/1846: Caroline Hamard dies. 2/4/1810: Napoleon m. Marie-Louise. 22/3/1594: Henri enters Paris. Departure before sunrise. Fade of day: obscene jests of soldiers. Salammbo is a sick boy. Night with old woman and dog. Parallels Louise Roque on 29/6/1848. II, 651: Flaubert at Eleusis 25/12 asking about Mysteries and obscene jests. Slave decapitates dog; leafless olive trees. Arrival at Matho's camp 2 hours after nightfall. Palm-branch bed, lion skin and £aimph. Pomegranate. Rodolphe's cufflinks of 23/24 Mar 1846, cf. broken chain. 24/7: Isis-Sothis festival: goddess and dog. Autumn equinox: Eleusinian mysteries, death of Adonis (1, 557), 'immense hymen' (Ci, 85). 24/3/1850: Rameaux, Mohammed (sick boy). 24/3: Attis.
338
Diachronic and synchronic charts
Day Oct Dec Jun Apr Jan Jul 4
2
25
25
Sep
'SOUSLATENTE' (I, 754~63).
Mar 25
5
Fire; Giscon: Salammbo's escape. Cry of triumph. Salammbo and Narr'Havas betrothed after Narr'Havas turns his coat. Night: Mercs bury their dead. 11, 753: In response to Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert compares funerailles des Barbares to 'les Mobiles en 1848'.
25/7/1593: Henri becomes Catholic because Paris worth a mass. 5/10/1600: Henri m. Marie de Medicis by proxy. 5/10 = 13 vendemiaire. 5/4: Dumouriez and Marmont betray. (25 Sep = 5 Oct; 5/15 Oct) 5
6
3 6
26
26
26 16
Women torture Giscon and his companions. Matho burns tent. Spendius says leg broken: his Sardinian stratagem. 26/6/1848: Mobiles3 atrocities after armistice.
27
27
27 17
News from Tunis and Spendius' harangues. Murder of Giscon (sickle). Lavatio: 27/3 = 4/4: Son castrates father-god with sickle.
28
28
28
Mercenaries eat supplies, then leave.
29
29
29
Hamilcar orders another army.
16
4
7
17
7 8
5 6
10. Day
Nys- Mar/ Sep/ Mar/ SAVING OF HANNIBAL AND SACRIFICE TO san Apr Oct Apr MOLOCH (I, 774-82).
1
7-8
20
28
28
7 Nyssan: Barbarians' shout before sunrise. Schahabarim curses Matho. Carthaginians debate all night.
2
8-9
21
29
2g
Day breaks with nothing decided. No fighting that day: exhaustion. Evening: Elders assemble for long session.
3
9-10 22
30
30
4
IO-II 23
1
31/1 Second day: springs begin to dry up.
5
11—12 24
2
1/2
Decision to offer sacrifice: women weep: Hamilcar finds springs. 10 Tischri: Day of Atonement: scapegoats. 10 Nyssan: Passover victim selected. Evening: springs dry up. Hamilcar substitutes slave's child for Hannibal. First visible crescent
'Salammbo3
339
of moon. 1/4/1841: Conception of Adolphe. 24/3: Sous la tente.
6 7
12-13 25 13-14 26
3 4
2/3 3/4
8
14-15 27
5
4/5
9
15-16 28
6
5/6
10 11
16-17 29 17-18 30
7 8
6/y y/8
12
18-19 31
9
8/9
13
19-20 1
10
Day
3 Oct. Thesmophoria begins (Scullard, 190-1). 3/4/1848: Death of Alfred Le Poittevin. Sacrifice to Moloch: tabernacles, thesmophorion. Slave child is 14th victim. Rains come at nightfall. 14 Nyssan: crucifixion. 4-5/4/1814: Marmont's troops delivered up. 4/4: Rhea-Cybele substitutes stone for Jupiter. Saturn swallows it: seek the mother. 15 Tischri: Tabernacles. Lavatio: 27/3 Empire, 4/4 Republic. Rains fall throughout night. Country born anew. Hamilcar hands over temporary command to Hannon, then disappears northwards with strongest troops. 15 Nyssan: Exodus.
News that Hamilcar is on Libyan coast: Gauls desert. Narr'Havas sees desertion and moves towards Carthage during the night. 31/3/1814: Alexander I leads allied army through eastern gate of Paris.
Narr'Havas arrives as saviour: refused access 9/10 to Salammbo. Barbarians see Numidians on Carthage's towers.
Oct/ Apr/ A/M Apr/
DEFILE DE LA HACHE (I, 783-9; 793-4).
Nov Oct O / N Oct/ Feb 1
20
2
21
1
20
8
21
9
Evening: Barbarians led into trap by red cloak and oxen. Attempts to escape: 400 succeed. 20/4/1808: Ferdinand falls into Bayonne trap; Louis Napoleon born. 8/4/1562: First War of Religion. 8/4/1852: Pecuchet discovers syphilis, Bouvard Mme Bordin's machinations. Morning: no hope! Fire of tentpoles can't burn mountain. Human tatters and bloodstained hair. Hardly enough provisions for 2 days: bulls slaughtered.
340 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Nov Oct
Oct/ Apr/ A/M J ^ /
O/N Ort/ Feb
DEFILE DE LA HACHE (1, 783-9; 793-4).
3
22
2
22
10
Mules slaughtered. Hope for relief from Tunis army.
4 5
23
3 4
23
//
24
12
6
25
*3
7
5 6
25
26
26
H
8
27
7
27
15
Q
28
8
28
16
29
9
29
iy
Naked white bodies of Iberians in sun. Garamantes begin cannibalism. Others join them in middle of night.
II
30
10
30
IV
Cannibalism continues.
12
31/1
II
I
19
Cannibalism continues.
13
l/2
12
2
20
Cannibalism continues.
14
2/3
13
3
21
Warm heavy fog of end-winter type. Numerous deaths and decay. 21/4: Roman New Year's Day, Rome's birthday.
15
3/4
14
4
22
16
15
5 6
23
17
4/5 5/6
18
6/7
l
7
7
25
19
7/8
18
8
26
20
8/9
19
9
2J
24
16
Evening: hunger grows sharper. 40,000 men in hippodrome. Between 5th and gth days: Autharite cf. ours a la Chandeleur (orig. 14 Feb). Evening: 3 Iberians die; companions leave them; bodies stripped; waterskins empty.
Weather clears and hunger starts again.
24
Some think they are at a feast and sing. Wind blows; sand trying to bury them. 25 Apr/Oct: Festin.
20,000 dead: half the army. Autharite suicidal when he sees dwarf. Message from Hamilcar. 10 spokesmen volunteer. Staircase at sunrise. Hamilcar examines symptoms of starvation. Gourds. Spendius stammers. Peace final! Hamilcar chooses 10 victims; Spendius faints. 27 Apr/Oct: scapegoat Baleares arrive at Carthage.
'Salammbd' 21
9/10
20
10
28
22
10/11
21
11
2g
23
11/12 22
12
30
24
12/13 23
13
/
25
13/14 24
14
2
341
Mercenaries wait for companions. Betrayal suspected.
Strongest Barbarians leave in morning; eat beanfield. Crushed by elephants. Night falls: Hamilcar sees 400. Leniency: hatred or perfidy? 30/4: Walpurgisnacht. Obscene unions mentioned after night of eating: homosexuals made to kill each other to bind Carthaginian army to Hamilcar, who thinks war is over. Narr'Havas to Salammbo with news of victory. Quails. Salammbos mouth, forehead and hands covered. Narr'Havas seems older sister; vows to kill Matho; leaves before sunset. Hannon leaves immediately.
12. Day
May
May
Mar
May
BROTHERHOOD OF PAIN (I, 789-91).
Nov Nov Sep Nov 18 19
IO 20
n 27
21 22
19 20
21 // 22 23
18 28
Narr'Havas betrays Hannon: with Hamilcar's complicity? Matho and flock of swallows. 10 ambassadors crucified: lions are 'nos freres'. Renversement of Hannon's camp. Hannon and 30 elders crucified: total 41. Hannon's offer of kingship a ruse to gain time cf. Talleyrand's death on 10 Mar/17 May 1838. Crosses made of tentpoles. 19/5: marshalate and Legion d'Honneur. 19/11/1792: The French people declare their fraternity with all nations who desire to be free (Soboul 11, 453). Half Numidians perish. (17/27 Nov 1583) People fling themselves down from Acropolis at sight of Mercenaries' tents. 17 May became 10 Mar, so 18 May is 11 Mar, and 3 months later will be 11 June.
342
Diachronic and synchronic charts '3-
Day
Sep/
A u g / J u n / Jww/
Mar Feb
I 2
1 2
3 4
Dec
Dec
18 28 29 30
21 22
//
19 29 30
22
30
23 24 25
31
20
31
23
12
23 24
13
FINAL BATTLE AND CAPTURE OF MATHO: I I - 13
JUNE/DECEMBER (I, 791-4).
3 months later, Mercenaries find themselves at Cobus, before Carthage. Libyan messenger: battle tomorrow at sunrise on plain of Rhades. Mercenaries are pontiffs of universal vengeance. Matho's repressed love for Salammbo to his companions: like parts of his own person. Thinking of Spendius. Like 2 fleets engaging, like wrecks in storm. Hamilcar in despair when Carthaginian people come to rescue to die for la Patrie. Matho cf. man hurling himself from cliff into sea. Narr'Havas captures him with net for wild beasts. Matho in Onofri position on elephant's back: 12/6. Carthage ablaze with lights. 12/24 June 1184 BC: Fall of Troy, Carthage's worst day. Last Barbarian in Defile killed by lion. Lion's roar echoed by mountain. Jackals arrive to finish remains. Carthaginian messenger departs.
14. Day Apr/ Apr/ Apr/ Apr/ END OF WAR: MARRIAGE-MURDER (1,794-7).
Oct
Oct Oct Oct 26 16 27
22
23 24 23 24 25
12
13
People arrive on eve of celebrations. 'Le jour des noces fixe dans la nouvelle lune', but first visible crescent arises in manner of full moon. Matho's death is end of war. Salammbo dies on wedding day. Grapes, lemons, pomegranates, pumpkins, melons. Some recall Mercenaries' banquet (same date). Spindle splits cheek, hip wound, long, red shape. Schahabarim performs Aztec sacrifice 'aux religions du Mexique' (Green, 112). 13/4/ 1834: 'Pacification' of Lyon; start of Paris
'L'Education sentimentale3 (i86g)
343
insurrection. 13/4/1598: Edict of Nantes. 13/ 4/1861: American Civil War begins. 23/4/ 1848: Easter Sunday and Election Day. 24/ 4/1814: Louis XVIII lands at Calais. 27/4: Polycarpe/Floribert/Toxcatl. 27/4/238 BC: Flora's temple inaugurated: secret name of Rome. 13/10/1815: Murat executed. 13/10/ 54: Death of Claudius and accession of Nero. 13/10/1837: Prise de Constantine. 23/10/4004 BC: Creation began. 27/10/1807: Treaty of Fontainebleau: Spain and France to conquer Portugal. Cu 1504: Juliette Flaubert m. Adolphe Roquigny, 17/4. 24 28 18
25 26
Massive prostitution and feast to last all night. 14
14/4: la sainte-Lydwine: syphilis.
TWO-TIMING IN L EDUCATION SENTIMENTALE'. TIME CHARTS
Day
Aug Feb
Aug Feb
Sep Mar
Sep Mar
LA VILLE-DE-MONTEREAU AND LE CYGNE DE LA CROIX, 1840 (11, 8-14).
Dec Dec 1
22
12
3
14
2
23
13
4
75
3
24
14
5
16
Frederic returns to Paris after visit to Barthelemy Moreau. Isidore leaves Nogent. 3/ 14 Sep 1843: Emma's crise, MB. (3/14 Sep 1752) La Ville-de-Montereau: Marthe will be 7 soon. Arnoux will spend 1 month in Switzerland. 15/ 9: Mater Dolorosa, birth of Louise Colet, death of Charlotte Cambremer de Croixmare. 4/15 Sep 1843: elopement date, MB. Arnoux: '"Ma femme" dans l'escalier'. 15/9/1822: 'Vautrin et Lucien de Rubempre'. 15/3/1841: the Aimable-Constance. 13/23 Feb: Jules meets Lucinde. 4/12/1851: lost day. Cygne de la Croix: Frederic's first disappointment. 5/9/1840: Elisa Judee m. Maurice Schlesinger. 15-16/9/1822: Lucien sells himself to Vautrin, Poitiers. Pe'nurie/Sagesse. 16/ 9/1862: Lacroix's banquet for Les Miserables.
344
Diachronic and synchronic charts 2.
Day
Oct
1
14
5
16
Dec Jan
Jun
Jun
12 22
II 21
21
/
I 2 12 22
I 22
2
Day
Jun Jul
J
3
23
Day
Nov Nov
Dec Dec
May Feb Jan Nov Aug Jul
VISIT TO DAMBREUSE, 1840 (n, 14-15).
Frederic's first vision of Dambreuse. Young woman in violet mantle enters blue coupe. Dambreuse = Talleyrand/Fouche: diplomat, 'paleur extraordinaire', glassy eyes.
PALAIS-ROYAL THEATRE SHOCK, 1841 (11, 17).
Frederic sees Arnoux with Hortense/Rosanette and Mile Vatnaz at Palais-Royal. Mourning band. 11/6/1815: Louis Napoleon's last sight of Napoleon before departure for Waterloo. 11/6/1829: Antoine Revoil dies. Frederic discovers that Marie is not dead: forgets purchases. Time loop ends. 12/6/1815: bogus
legacy from Napoleon to Louis Napoleon. 12/ 6/1846: Frederic's inheritance. 12/6/1840: Louise Colet stabs Alphonse Karr in back over Guepes article. 12/6/1848: Assembly quarrel over Louis Napoleon's right to sit in Assembly.
Dec Jun
I 12
I 12
I 12
/ 12
13
13
*3
13
22
22
22
22
23
23
23
23
DUSSARDIER'S CARTON, DUCED, 1841 (11, 17-20).
HUSSONNET
INTRO-
Hussonnet's allusion to Chateaubriand's description of Bonapartist Louvel: assassination of Due de Berry 13/2/1820. Feb = Dec, 12 = 13. Dussardier is Hercule: festivals 12-13 Aug. Nasturtiums, sweet peas: May = Dec. Carton: Gustave's birth/vocation; 1/12/1803: institution du livret ouvrier; 1/12/1830: Musset's Nuit Venitienne; 1/12/1832: Charivari founded; 1/
12/1856: first cuts to MB in Revue de Paris. 1830: Renaud dinner. (1/12 Dec 1700, 10/20 Dec 1582)
'UEducation sentimentale' (i86g)
Day
1
Nov
Dec
Jun
Jan
Feb May
30
Dec
1 1 / / 21 31
345
REUNION WITH ARNOUX, 1841 (11, 20-1).
Six months after Palais-Royal shock, Hussonnet compares Arnoux to Napoleon. Arnoux recognises Frederic in the mirror, and commissions forgeries from Pellerin. 21/31 Dec/Jan: Henry visits Morel (mirror). SAT Arnoux due to leave for Belgium, cf. 12/6/
2
1
12
12 22
1015: iNapoieon leaves 101* Waterloo. 1700)
(1/12 u e c SUN
6. Day Feb/ May Dec Dec
Mar Jun Jan Jan
1
28
28
30 20
28 18
2
1
29
31 21
2g 19
POSTPONED INVITATIONS, ARTISTIC FRAUD, 1841 (II, 22-3).
Arnoux asks Frederic to write notes putting guests off attending launching of rival journal. 28/12/1841: Failure of Lamartine's bid for Assembly presidency. 28/12/1842: Flaubert passes law after 2 months' study. Frederic discovers that Marie does not live above shop and that Arnoux has defrauded Pellerin and buyer. 29/12/1843: Bogus date on Hugo's Souvenir. 29 Dec/Jan 1848/9: Rateau Proposal. Pellerin's fraud because bills due: end Dec. 29/31 Jan 1857: MB trial a fraud. 31/ 1 /1847: Rosanette shows Frederic stolen cakes in Arnoux's paletot.
7Day
1
Jan
Jan
TROUT FROM GENEVA, RUE DE CHOISEUL, 1842
Apr Jun Jul
Oct
Jul
(11,24-7).
20
Dec
12
15
5
Arrival of'trout'from Geneva. Deslauriers's arrival: vacance complete. Frederic
346 Day
2
Diachronic and synchronic charts Dec
Jan
Jan
TROUT FROM GENEVA, RUE DE CHOISEUL, 1842
Apr Jun
Oct
Jul
Jul
(11,24-7).
21
16
6"
13
trips on tigerskin and sees cqffret. 13/12/1842: Flaubert's majority. Frederic finds vocation on Pont-Neuf. 22/4/ 1843: End of Romanticism. (7/17 Jan 1584)
3
22
17
7
8. Day Dec Dec Jun Jun Jan Jan Jul Jul 14
10
14
10
ARNOUX'S NAME: 'LUI', 1842
(n, 30)-
Deslauriers's comparison of Arnoux to Hugo's 'Lui' ends. 10/6/1848: Bonapartist demonstrations in absence of Pretender. 14/6/1856: Public baptism of Prince Imperial on anniversary of Marengo and Friedland. 10/6/1840: Law ordering erection of Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides. 14 Jun/Jul 1819: Victor announces departure, Un Coeur simple.
Day Jan Jan Jul Jul Dec Dec Jun Jun 1 1
5
11 12
11
15 16
15 16
/
12
5
MARIE AND BALANDARD, 1842 (il, 30).
Deslauriers sees Marie with Balandard at Palais de Justice 3 weeks after 'Lui' episode. 1/ 5 Jul 1804: birth of George Sand. 5/7/1845: Victor-Leonie episode in Passage Saint-Roch. (1/12 July 1700, 2/12 July 1584)
10. Day
1
May
Apr
Aug
Aug
Nov Oct
Feb
Feb
4
14
18
FREDERIC FAILS LAW, 1842 (11, 30-1).
Recapitulation with Deslauriers. Fortnight after beginning of August: Frederic
'UEducation sentimentaW (i86g)
347
19
5
75
fails. Hussonnet says Arnoux leaving for Germany tomorrow. 5 Aug 1840: Boulogne coup attempt begins. 5/8/1852: Napoleon-le-Petit appears. (5/15 Aug 1583) MON
20
6
16
Frederic writes to mother: will sit in Nov. TUE
21
7
iy
Mme Moreau Frederic.
22
8
18
Frederic expected in Nogent, but refuses to leave. THU
23
g
ig
Quarrel follows, but mother sends money. Gap of Alhambra (19/8 = 23/4 [Vinalia]; 23/ 4 = 3/5 (Shakespeare)) FRI
24
10
20
Dec
Nov
MARIE'S RETURN IN 1842 (11, 32-3,63).
Jan
disappointed;
writes to WED
Frederic receives money. Buys clothes and visits Arnoux. Breaks Rosanette's parasol after interrupting rendezvous between Arnoux and Rosanette. 3 months' ennui begins. 10/8: incestuous conception of Adonis. 20/8/1807: conception of Louis Napoleon at Saint-Cloud. 10/ 2/1812; Achille-Cleophas m. Caroline. 24/4/ 43: Deslauriers's depucelage. SAT
Day
Nov
1
10
20
20
Marie returns to Paris 'vers la fin de novembre'. SUN
2
11
21
21
Arnoux informs Frederic of Marie's return.
May Jul
Jun
May
MON
3
12
1
22
22
4
13
2
23
23
Walk along Boulevard des Italiens with Marie. Dinner invitation for Thursday. Napoleon's depucelage 22/11/1787. 1851 break with R-A. 1868 final scene. 11, 63: Frederic remembers a 'crepuscule d'hiver'. 22/11/1832: Le Roi s'amuse. (12/22 Nov 1583, 22/12/1582 = 1/1/ I583) TUE 'Silent'day. 23/11/1829: Elisa m.Judee. 11,30: Tavant-dernier dans la serie, position mauvaise'. WED
348 Day
5
Diachronic and synchronic charts Nov
Jan
Dec
Nov
May Jul
Jun
May
14
24
24
3
MARIE'S RETURN IN 1842 (11, 32-3,63).
Next Arnoux dinner (Thursday). Frederic invited. 24/11/1829: Elisa raped during wedding banquet. 24 May/June 1843: rose bouquet at Saint-Cloud. THU
12.
Day
1
Apr
Aug
May Apr
Oct Sep
Feb
Nov Feb Oct Aug
22
19
3
12
23 13
2
2
23 13 3
20
4
24 14
ALHAMBRA, 1843 (11, 33-6).
22/4/1843: Burgraves closes; Lucrece triumphs. 23/4/1841: Charivari article on La Chaumiere. 23/4/1848: Club de l'lntelligence and elections. 23/4/1804: hereditary principle becomes law. 23/4/1864: Shakespeare banquet planned for tricentenary of birth. 23/ 4/1616: Both Shakespeare and Cervantes died, but 10 days apart (23/4 o.s. = 3/5 N.S.). Delmas and Dussardier both Auguste. 23/4 and 19/8: Vinalia; Venus Erycina and prostitutes' festival. 3/5: Floralia, Napoleon arrives Elba. G-M, 27: 'un dimanche d'ete'. La Censure: 12/4/1857: Flaubert's dedication of MB to Senard. Dumas and Porte-SaintMartin: Antony 3/5/1831. Le Peuple: 13-14 Apr 1834 (Rosanette's defloration). 19/8: death of Augustus, Beranger born. 23/4/1809: Napoleon wounded at Ratisbon: cannon smoke. 13/ 8: Zorai'de Turc. 3/5/1847: Cisy dismissed. 23/2/1839/1848: Flaubert's/Frederic's depucelage. 13 May/Aug 1843: thigh amputation, MB. 3/9/1843: Emma's crise nerveuse. 13/8/1840: Morel envies Henry on Pont de la Concorde. 23/4/1840: Henry's depucelage, ESi. (3/13 Nov 1583; 23 Aug = 2 Sep 1610) Deslauriers's depucelage with Clemence Daviou. Frederic tempted to suicide, Pont de la Concorde. 10-day drop. Cisy wants to borrow Clemence for initiation. 10/20 Feb/Aug 1842:
'UEducation sentimentale3 (i86g)
349
Frederic interrupts scene primitive between Rosanette and Arnoux. Frederic thinks of PontNeuf: 7/17 Jan = 22 Apr/Oct = 1 Nov = 14 Dec 1842, Tautre hiver'. (14/24 Feb 1583) MON
*3> Day
Nov
Mar May
MARIE'S FETE AT SAINT-CLOUD, 1843 (n> 3^~9)-
Dec Sep Jun 1
2
3 13
2
24 14
24
3 13
2
3 13
24 14
Arnoux leaves prematurely 'aux premieres feuilles'. 23/11/1829: Elisa m. Judee, 23hn. Eugene conceived. Rose-letter wounds Marie. Failed boat ride on river, cf. Louis Napoleon with Disraelis. 24/3: flowering of Joseph's staff. G-M, 27: 'un soir d'ete'. G-M, 45: '24 Mai'. 24-5 May: Sarah la Bohemienne and Fete des Trois Maries. 24/6: John the Baptist. 24/11/1829: Elisa's rape at wedding banquet (L.57-8). 24/11/1793: Christian Era abolished in France. 24/11/1798: Napoleon's letter re Josephine's adultery published in London Morning Chronicle:
humiliation. 24/6/1843: Valerie Marneffe's funeral, Cousine Bette.
24/3/1850: Gustave's syphilis on the Nile.
14. Day
Aug Aug Feb Feb
Sep Mar
Sep Mar
43
43
44
44
2
12 22
3
PICNIC AND RETURN TO NOGENT: AUG 1843/ SEPT 1844 (11, 40-1). Picnic; Marie due back. 3/14 Sep 1843: Emma's
1
14
crise. 3 Sep 1781: Eugene-Rose de Beauharnais born. 13 Aug/Sep eclipsed by substitution of 14/9 for 13/8 at moment Hussonnet walks on his hands. SAT
350 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Aug Aug
Feb 43
Aug Aug
Sep
PICNIC AND RETURN TO NOGENT: AUG 1843/
Mar
SEPT 1844 (n> 40-1).
Mar 44
44
13 23
4
75
14 24
5
16
15 25
6
iy
7
18
'Silent' day. 1793: Birth of Caroline Fleuriot. 7/ 9/1843: news of Leopoldine's death appears in Le Siecle. WED
Jun
Dec
FREDERIC'S RETURN TO PARIS, 1845/1846/1847
16 26
Day
Sep Sep
Feb 43
Feb/ Jan
Frederic postpones coach trip; misses Marie; meets Dambreuse couple 4 years after meeting Arnoux couple and 20 years before Delacroix dies. Failed elopement, MB. 4/9/1843: Leopoldine drowns. SUN Coach trip home; Roque marriage 5/16 Sep 1844. Fourth anniversary of Cygne de la Croix and Penurie/ Sagesse. G-M, 30: 'septembre 1843'. 5^9^l^4°: Maurice m. Elisa. MON Frederic ruined: disinherited. Louis Napoleon's Boulogne coup 5/8/1840. Hugo arrives Jersey as Napoleon-le-Petit published 5/8/1852. 6 / 9 / 1843: Leopoldine's funeral; Hugo absent with Juliette. 15/8/1842: Frederic fails law. 17/9/1849: TSA rejected. TUE
Mar Dec May Feb (11,43-54). Jul J a n 22
I1 II
23
22 12
24 l
3 3
3
2
2
12 12
12 12
22
22
3
13 13 23
4
14 14 24
Frederic receives news of inheritance in morning. Reference to baquet a lessive knocked over night before. (11/21 Feb 1583; 1/12 Dec 1701; 22/12/1582 = 1/1/1583; 1/12 Jan 1701; 2/12 Jan 1584)
3
Night coach for Paris full so Frederic must take next night's coach. 1845 becomes 1846. 13/ 12: Gustave's birthday. (13/23 Jan 1584)
4
Mme Eleonore dies and Louise Roque is taller. A year has dropped: it is now 1846. Christmas Eve = Old New Year's Eve. G-M,
13 13 23 14 *4 24
'UEducation sentimental (i86g)
351
15: 'repart pour Paris en fevrier (46)'. (14/24 Dec 1615; 14/24 Feb 1583) 25
4 4 14
5
15 25
5
15 25
Minute's silence at relay station: someone stamps on coach sous la bdche. 15/12/1809: Josephine learns of divorce. Search for Arnoux. G-M, 27: 'retour a Paris a la fin de Janvier 1846'. 15/12/1840: retour de SainteHelene.
(15/25 Dec 1582)
6
26
5 5 l 5
16 26
27
6 6
16
17 17 27
7
6
Search for Regimbart in Paris. Frederic finds Arnoux, plus Eugene, in Rue Paradis. Eugene c. 3 years old; Arnoux is Henri IV and Napoleon. (6/16 Feb 1682)
17 *7 27
7
Frederic lunches with Deslauriers. Weather is summery. Saturnalia. Frederic orders new clothes and leaves for Le Havre. (7/17 Jan 1584; 17/27 Jun 1585)
16 16 26
7
28
7
18
18
Silent day
8
1 11
8 18
19 29
ig 29
Silent day. (19/2 = 1/3/1700; 1/11 Mar 1583)
2 12
9 l 9
20
10 20
30
3°
Frederic returns to Paris. Attends masked ball with Arnoux. 10/20 Dec 1848: Election and swearing-in of Louis Napoleon as French President. Rosanette arranges postponement of Arnoux's debt to Oudry/Dambreuse: end December. (10/20 Dec 1582; 10/20 Jan 1584)
21
11 21 31
10 20
Rosanette prevents 'duel' and becomes 'la Marechale'. Curtains open before 7 a.m.: sunlight. New Year's Eve: 22/12 became 1/1. 21/ 5/1809: Massena stops duel between Lannes and Bessieres. 3/3/1840: Leon/Louis Napoleon duel. 21/2/1793: Break in marshalate. 21/ 5/1847: Frederic/Cisy duel in Bois de Boulogne. Gi, 606-9: Flaubert's dream of 2-3 Mar 1856: chez la Presidente, anniversary of Caroline-Josephine's marriage, 3/3/1845. 21 May/Dec: la saint-Thomas. (11 /21 Feb 1583)
352
Diachronic and synchronic charts 16.
Day
Jun
Jul
Dec J a n 46 46
Jan
Jan
FREDERIC'S BAPTISM INTO PARISIAN SOCIETY,
Jul 47
Jul 47
1847 (11,54-60). Frederic writes note to Dambreuse and is invited to wedding reception. Hors-temps created by calendar coincidences. (22/12/ 1582 = 1/1/1583, 1/12Jan 1701, 2 / i 2 j a n 1584, 12/22 J a n 1584) TUE
1
22
22
1/2
12 22
2
23
23
2/3
13 23
3
24
24
3/4
14 24
Marie's skin suffused with liquid gold. Ball was 'Pautre soir'; Saint-Cloud 3 years ago (24/6/ 43). THU
25
4 /5 4/5
75 25 25
'Silent' day. 15/1/46: Achille-Cleophas dies.
25
26
5/6
16 26
'Silent' day.
26 27
27
6/7
17
27 27
Frederic's housewarming: Arnoux is 'peu solide'. Mention of Buzencais food riots. (7/17 Jan 1584) SUN
28
28
17 7/8
18 28
Arnoux takes Rosanette to Moulin-Rouge after 'Oudry' leaves. (7/17 Jan 1584) MON
May
Day
1
2
Mme Dambreuse mentions Cecile at reception. Rosanette, Felix and the old woman in black on Josephine's birthday. 13/1/47: Buzencais food riots began. WED
FRI
Apr
Mar
Feb
ROSANETTE'S PORTRAIT AND DAMBRUESE BALL,
Nov Oct
Sep
Aug
1847 (11,62-9).
4 14
14 24
10 20
10 20
Portrait sitting in Pellerin's studio. Walk home via the Patisserie anglaise. 20 Feb/Aug 1842: Rosanette and Arnoux 24/4/1843: Clemence and Deslauriers. Q, 808: 20/2/1847: 'serrepapier brise'. Deslauriers invokes Treize. SAT
5 15
15 25
11 21
11 21
Dinner with Marie. (11 /21 Feb 1583)
SUN
'UEducation sentimentale' (i86g)
353
i6
16 26
12 22
12 22
Frederic visits Dambreuse. Oudry present. Invitation to Dambreuse ball. MON
4 l
17 27
13 23
13 23
'Silent' day: Frederic's depucelage in 1848, Gustave's in 1839. Terminalia and bissextile.*
8
18 28
14 24
14 24
Dambreuse ball. Women carry violets. Rosanette expels Oudry (Regifugium). Alternative bissextile.* All declare Republic impossible in France (14/24 Feb 1583) WED
l
J
i9
19 29
25
25
Clemence Vatnaz says Rosanette with Delmar. Cachemire argument. 25/2/1830: premiere of Hernani. 25/2: Alternative bissextile. 25/8: Louise's y?te. THU
10 2O
20 30
16 26
16 26
6
l
18
9
5
5
TUE
Promised three times on 25/2 but never arrives. 26/2/1802 Victor Hugo born. 26/2/1815 Napoleon escapes from Elba, FRI * Bissextile/leap-year day counted as one with preceding day: this may be read as a 5-day time run with 23 — 24 — 25.
18. Day
Mar/
Mar/
FIFTEEN THOUSAND FRANCS, 1847 (n> 73~6).
Apr Apr 1
30
23
2
31
24
3
1
25
Notary's letter promises 15,000 francs tomorrow. Frederic visits Deslauriers in Rue des Trois-Maries. Dismissal of Clemence Daviou (tartan). TUE Arnoux owes 18,000 francs that very day. Asks Frederic to take place of Vanneroy: 'd'ici a 8 jours' / 'a la fin du mois' Arnoux expecting 50,000 francs. WED Frederic tells Deslauriers he has no money. THU
4 5 6
7
Deslauriers returns.
FRI
2
26
3
27
M
11
SAT
4
28
••
11
SUN
5
29
MON
354
Diachronic and synehronic charts
Day
Mar/
Mar/
FIFTEEN THOUSAND FRANCS, 1847 (n> 73~6).
Apr Apr 8
6
30
9
7
31
TUE
Arnoux puts Frederic off until tomorrow at promised time of repayment. Marie's four 1000-franc bills fall due: plan to sell Chartres house. WED
10
8 1
11
g
2
Arnoux disappoints Frederic, who fails Deslauriers. Frederic gives Marie rose 'aux premiers jours d'avril' but it's also 22 days before Creil on 1 May (2 = 9 Apr). 2/4/1847: Good Friday. 9/4: Mary of Cleophas. FRI
12
10
3
Frederic visits Dambreuse 3 weeks before Creil. SAT
Apr
May
ARNOUX'S CONFIDENCE TRICK: CHAMP DE MARS,
Oct
Dec
1847(11,77-87).
Day
Aug
Jan
Feb Jul
Arnoux postpones payment again.
THU
Marie receives anonymous letter at Montataire. Frederic receives note from Rosanette. Factory workers' day off tomorrow. Hair: Adele and Sainte-Beuve. SAT
1
17
6
21
/
2
18
7
22
2
3
19
8
23
3
Cisy dismissed in favour of Arnoux. Alhambra: SUN 23/4 = 3/5 / l 843-
4
20
9
24
4
Arnoux returns Senecal.
Champ de Mars with Rosanette. Marie appears. Deslauriers's coat spattered, Boulevard des Italiens. Cafe Anglais. Cisy's bet and depucelage. 24 hours with Bordelaise. G-M, 27, 28 bourses en avril', 'ete 1847'. 2/5/1847: Musset dies, cf. Hussonnet. 18/8/1852: Gustave to Cafe Anglais with Louise Colet. No. 14: same room as with Musset, bracelet. SUN
to Montataire,
dismisses TUE
'L'Education sentimentaW (i86g) 25
5
355
Pellerin visits Frederic re painting. Senecal visits on way to memorial service for Godefroy Cavaignac. Deaths of Napoleon-Charles and Napoleon 1807, 1821. WED
20. Day
Aug
Jun
Feb/
May
MAISON D'OR AND DUEL, 1847 (11, 87-92).
Dec Mar Nov 1
19 29
19 19
19 1
ig 29
2
20 30
20 30
20 2
20 30
Notification from Oudry, letter from Hussonnet. Souper de gargon for Anselme de Forchambeaux at Maison d'Or. Gisy too young to join Comaing's 'club'. 'Sophie' Arnoux and duel challenge: Frederic hurls plate at Cisy's face; hits stomach. 19/5/1802: Legion d'Honneur; 19/5/1804: marshalate. 19/5/1798: Egyptian expedition. (19 Feb = 1 Mar 1700; 1/ 11 Mar 1583) WED No one attends Amselme's marriage, cf. Le Sexe faible. Frederic and Cisy both afraid. Castor and Pollux. 20/5/1799 birth of Balzac. THU
3
21 31
21
21 3
21 31
Duel in Bois de Boulogne quincunx. Cisy nicks own thumb. 21/5/1809: Lannes-Bessieres duel at Aspern-Essling. 3/3/1840: Leon/Louis Napoleon duel in London. 31/5/1845: Frederic Baudry m. Lucie Senard. 31/5/1846: Flaubert's letter re Alfred's marriage. 31/5/1839: 'C'est demain qu'on se marie' (Achille's wedding 1/6). 31/5/1846: Felicite and Theodore elope; Leon marries Leocadie Leboeuf. 31/5/1793: Reign of Terror. 31/5/1840: suffrage law. 3/3/1847: Frederic introduces Cisy to Rosanette. 3/3/1845: Caroline marries Hamard. 21 May/Dec: la saint-Thomas (Coptic/Roman): twinship. Gemini: Castor and Pollux. FRI
356
Diachronic and synchronic charts 21.
Day
Dec/Jul
Jul
Jan
Jun/
Jul
PORTRAIT AND POULETTE; RECONCILIATION,
1847fa93~6)-
Frederic sees Hussonnet's Poulette article and Pellerin's painting: who's fooling whom? Hussonnet's revenge for 19/5 refusal of loan. 27/ 6/1851: Leonie sends Hugo's love letters to Juliette Drouet. (17/27 Jun 1631) SUN
1
27 17
7
8
2J 17
2
28
8
9
28
Cisy discusses Frederic with Mme Dambreuse.
3
29
9
10
2g
TUE
4
30 20
10
11
30 20
MON
Frederic gains 30,000 francs on stock exchange; attends Dambreuse reception. Paul de Gremonville is 'diplomate en habit bleu'. La saint-Adolphe and date of Rosanette's ball. Gremonville = Prince = Young Turk. La saint-Paul.
5
31
11
12
1 21 2
6
1
12
13
22
7 8
2
13
14
3 4
14
3 4
9
15
16
5 25
WED
Reunion with Deslauriers through Dussardier's efforts. (1/12 July 1700) THU Frederic tells of loss of 15,000 francs. (2/12 July 1584)
FRI
Frederic won't allow proceedings against Marie. 5/7/1845: Hugo and Leonie caught in adultery. MON
22. Day Jul
15/ 16
Sep Mar
Sep Oct Mar Apr
15
25
5
18
28
15
DUSSARDIER'S PUNCH AND PURCHASE OF PORTRAIT, 1847 (11, 103-6).
10 guests; 5 anonymous. Reference to Montpensier Jete of 5/7/1847 and Teste-Cubieres verdicts of 15-16/7/1846. 5/10/1847: Hortense Bonaparte's death. 5/4/
'UEducation sentimentale' (i86g)
357
1793: 'le traitre Dumouriez' deserts to Austrians. G-M, 28: 30/9: 'on interdit le banquet des typographies'. 5/10/1843: last episode of Mysteres de Paris appears. 15/10/1848: Senard replaced as Minister of Interior. (25 Sep = 5 Oct 1583; 5/15 Oct 1582) (28 Mar/Sep = 5 Apr/Oct; lavatio) 16/ 17
17/ 18
18/ 19
16 19
26 29
6 16
l
7
27
7
20
20
17
18
28
21
31
29
8 18
g 19
Deslauriers brings up subject of portrait again. It is delivered that evening. Phalanx. 6/7 1846: Alfred m. Louise. 6/4/1793: Committee of Public Safety includes Delmas and Delacroix. 6/4/1864: Caroline Hamard marries Ernest Commanville. 6/4/1814: 'Napoleon IF becomes emperor. 6/4/1846: Alfred's funeral. 26/3/1847: Chamber rejects bills for electoral and parliamentary reform. 26/9/1848: Louis Napoleon allowed to take seat in Assembly for first time. 6/10/1848: Lamartine's speech persuades Assembly to let people elect President. Frederic visits Marie in shop above factory: quest for negroes for Louise. He will never marry. 7/10/1840: Belle-Poule arrives at St Helena as Louis Napoleon begins Ham imprisonment. 17/10/1815: Napoleon arrives St Helena: 'My son will avenge me.' 7/4/30 AD: historical crucifixion. Frederic's profession of love for Marie: she trembles all over. 19/7/35: conception of Marie-Adele. 8/10/1856: 'Marie-Adelaide' Schlesinger marries. 8/10/1846: La Cousine Bette begins to appear. 18/4/1857: Levy's edition of Madame Bovary appears. Frederic follows Marie to Auteuil house: caprice. 9/10/1817: Caroline Flaubert dies. 19/4/1836: date of birth on Marie-Adele Schlesinger's birth certificate. 9/7/1847: Chateau-Rouge reform banquet opens campaign.
358
Day
1
Diachronic and synehronic charts
Aug/Feb
Feb
Feb
Sep
Mar Apr Jun Aug
Mar Apr Jun Aug
31
15
11
21
22
//
23 2
1
16
12
22
23
12
24 3
2
17
13
23
24
13
25
4
3
18
14
24
25
14
26 5
4
19
15 26 27
25 15
FEBRUARY REVOLUTION 1848 (11, 103-15).
Beginning of Eugene's illness; reposoir in Rue Tronchet violets, heather. (Fete-Dieu = 2 5 / 6 / 1848; Venus Erycina = 23/4; Day of Violets = 22/3.) Deslauriers says pear is ripe. Eugene as dog: Festival of Lares at Parentalia; Lupercalia 15/2. 11/21 Feb: Marie and Emilie grant rendezvous. (11/21 Feb 1583) MON Frederic summoned by Deslauriers but waits in Rue Tronchet. Eugene saved. 22/2: Frederic and Henry wait in vain. 22/3: violets, tree trunk of Attis festival. 22/3/1846: death of Caroline-Josephine. 22/8/1799: Napoleon leaves Egypt because 'pear is ripe'. 12/24 Jun: Fall of Troy (Pergamum). 12/8/43: Marie due back but absent. TUE •Frederic's depucelage in Rue Grange-Bateliere. Takes Rosanette to Rue Tronchet. 23/2: Terminalia. 23/4: Venus Erycina (heather). Russian prince has just left: 13 = 23 = 24 = 25. Tearing of silk: veil of Temple at crucifixion: 25/3. Reposoir: 25/6/1848: FeteDieu. 13-14/4/1834: Rosanette's defloration; Rue Transnonain. 23-4/4/1843: Deslaurier's depucelage. 23/2/1839: Gustave's in brothel Rue du Platre. (2 Aug = 2 Sep 1610) WED •Frederic abandons Rosanette. Louis-Philippe flees. 24 Feb/May: Regifugium. Dussardier's cheek scratched by bayonet, cf. vision in Rue Transnonain 14/4/1834 and thigh wound 24/ 6/1848. Smashed porcelain at Tuileries: fall of Orleans dynasty. Equinoctial tide: 24/25/26 Mar. 24/8/1572: la saint-Barthe'lemy. THU •Deslauriers to provinces. Rosanette complains of desertion. Carnival gaiety. 25/2 1847: cachemire argument and Mile Vatnaz's vow of revenge. 25/6/1847: Fete-Dieu. FRI
'L'Education sentimentale' (i86g) 20
16 27 28
26 16
359
At Prado, Senecal urges attack on Hotel de Ville. Creation of gardes mobiles. Republic proclaimed. 26/2/1847 promised 3 times but didn't arrive. 26/2/1815 escape from Elba. SAT
* Possible dates for bissextile: 2 days in 1 date.
24. Day
Mar
Mar
Mar
Mar
CLUB DE ^INTELLIGENCE
AND MOUTON D'OR,
Apr Apr Apr Apr 1848 (11, 118-22). Feb Feb Feb Feb May May May May 1
13
25
24
23
2
14
26
25
24
3
15
27
26
26
The de veau produces charivari. Frederic hissed. Rosanette accuses Frederic of everything that has happened in France for past 2 months, including departure of rich people from Paris. 23/3: Appearance of Golden Fleece constellation. 25/3: crucifixion: Delmar. Quarrel over gold sheep/Delmar between Rosanette and Mile Vatnaz. Duel threatened. Rosanette says prince has just left. Club de PIntelligence was Tautre jour'. 20/25 Apr: disappearance of Golden Fleece. Russian prince: 13 = 23-4 = 25 Feb/Apr (Julian calendar). 25/5/1846: Prince Louis Napoleon escapes from Ham.
25Day
Feb
Apr
Jun
Jun
THE'JUNE DAYS'OF 1848 (11, 122-36).
Mar May Dec Dec
1
20
20
10
20
Frederic takes Arnoux's place (24-hour rendezvous). Arnoux arrives 11 p.m. Frederic tempted to kill Arnoux during night. 10/20 Dec: Louis Napoleon elected and sworn in as president. TUE
360 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Feb
Apr
Jun
Jun
THE'JUNE DAYS' OF 1848 (11, 122-36).
Mar May Dec Dec 2
21
21
11
21
3
22
22
12
22
4
23
23
13
23
5
24
24
14
24
6
25
25
15
25
7
26
26
16
26
8
27
27
17
27
9
28
28
18
28
Lunch with Arnoux, then home' (?) until evening. home. Frederic meets Martinon. Rosanette must
Frederic sleeps 'at Rosanette not at Dambreuse and choose. WED
Frederic and Rosanette leave for Fontainebleau. Fountain splashing and 'barres': Napoleon's favourite game on abdication anniversary, 1815. (22 Dec = 1 Jan 1583) THU Visit to site of 1814 abdication. Rosanette is '29' on Josephine's birthday (23/6/1763, but marriage certificate says 23/6/1767). Napoleon II emperor 1815. FRI Dussardier/Du Camp's thigh wound saving gamin/tricolore. Resignation of Pentarchy. Rosanette's story of seduction and suicide attempt. Heather. SAT Frederic reads of Dussardier's wound and departs for Paris. Fete-Dieu. Affre shot. SUN Frederic finds Dussardier, cf. Matho finding Spendius after Battle of Macar, 26 Jun/Dec (1, 746). Gardes mobiles. Roque kills adolescent. Affre dies. MON Nothing whatever is said about this day. Mobiles /troops massacre rebels after armistice. (17/27 Jun 1585) TUE Dambreuse dinner ('mercredi'). Reflection/ echo act by Gremonville and Dambreuse. Cavaignac voted head of government. Louise: 10/12 months since Frederic's visit to Nogent. WED
10
29
29
19
2g
Louise and Catherine go in quest of Frederic. Soldiers' 'polissonneries': Skirophoria. Louise 'guillotined'. Senard becomes Minister of Interior. Hundred Days end. Thurs 26/6/1851: Louise Colet visits Croisset. THU
'L'Education sentimentale' (1869)
361
26. Day
Dec
1
10 20
NEWS OF ARNOUX, 1848 (11,137).
Rosanette tells Frederic that Arnoux has set the Bordelaise up in business. Power change makes Arnoux dream of 'chapellerie militaire'. G-M, 31: 'un jour vers le milieu de decembre'. 10/12/1848: Louis Napoleon elected President. 20/12/1848: swearing-in as President; oath to defend Republic and constitution.
27. Day
Jan
Jun
Feb Jul 1
29
Dec
2g 31
2
1
30
PREGNANCY AND LOAN REPAYMENT, 1848/1849
Jan (11, 137-9).
30
Frederic meets Gompain and red-bonneted Mignot: tete de veau, Rateau Proposition. Embrace between Frederic and Marie interrupted by Rosanette: tutoiement = souffiet. Marie's hysterical laughter. Rosanette announces pregnancy and 1000-franc debt. 29/ 12/1848: Rateau Proposition tabled, 29/1/ 1849: passed. 30/1: English tete de veaw, 21/1: French. 7/7/1852: Gustave's reaction to Musset's tutoiement of Louise Colet during 'scene du fiacre' of 3-4/7: 'un soufflet sur la joue': vengeance. Flaubert has conflated this scene with 'promenade au clair de lune' of 20/6/1852. 29/12/1843: False date on Hugo's 'Souvenir' for Leonie. 29/1/1857: Trial of MB: Flaubert substitutes 31/1/1857. 31/1/1858: Death of Gabriel Delessert. Frederic sees two Augustes at Mile Vatnaz's raout. Debt repaid with interest. End of quarter bill again. 1/1/1849: postage stamps introduced. 1/1/ 1842: Adolphe born. 1/1/1806: Valentine de Laborde born.
362
Diachronic and synchronic charts 28.
Day
Dec Jun
May
CECILE'S WEDDING, 1850 (11,141-3).
Dec Nov 1
27 17
27 17
Cecile's civil marriage. 27/5/1852: Musset's reception, Academy. (17/27 Jun 1585; 17/27 Nov 1583) MON
2
28 18
28 18
Cecile's religious marriage to Martinon.
29 19
2g 19
3
TUE
Frederic 'conquers' Mme Dambreuse. Universal suspension of things. Deslauriers and Gremonville. Constantinople falls, 29/5/1453; Josephine dies 29/5/1814. Gustave to Louise Colet on Musset's discours de reception: 29/5/ 1852.
3° 20
30
3i
3'
21
21
20
WED
Frederic and Gremonville leave. 29-30/6: Pierre-et-Paul becomes la saint-Paul
THU
31/5/1850: suffrage law. 31/5/1845: Frederic Baudry m. Lucile Senard. 31/5/1846: Gustave's letter re Alfred's marriage; Leon Dupuis m. Leocadie Leboeuf. 31/5/1849: Gustave announces Achille's marriage 'demain'. FRI
29Day
Dec
Dec Jan
DAMBREUSE SAVES CECILE'S INHERITANCE, 1851
Dec (11,144). 1
20
31
10
One week after Changarnier's dismissal on 3 / 1, Dambreuse burns will in his wife's favour. 31/1/1858: Delessert dies. If 22/12 = 1/1, 31/ 12 = 10/1. 10/1/1839: Bouvard pere dies, after having made his natural son his heir. 10/12: Louis Napoleon's election was the illegitimate child's inheritance. 20/12: masked ball and banker's son (Turc).
'L'Education sentimentale' (i86g)
363
30. Day
5
Dec
Apr
Aug
Feb
DEATH OF DAMBREUSE; BIRTH OF FREDERIC
Jun
Sep
Mar
BASLIN, 1851 (11, 144-8).
12 22
12 22
12 22
12 22
12/2: Death of Dambreuse. His wife proposes to Frederic. 12/22 Feb 1848: Eugene saved. 22/3/1846: Caroline dies. G-M, 41-2: hemoptysie cle 13 fevrier' (12 = 13) WED
13
13
13
3
'3 2 3
13/2: Frederic watches over body. Corpse has yellow face and eyes open to judge Frederic. Troop of she-asses. Frederic makes funeral arrangements, including paying. THU
2
3
2
J
4
H
3
2
24
24
24
*4 2 4
15 2 5
15 2 5
15 2 5
75 2 5
16
16
16
16
14/2: Dambreuse's funeral: life of the Magdalene. Body buried near that of Benjamin Constant, author of Adolphe. 24/8/1827: 100,000 demonstrate at Manuel's funeral at Pere Lachaise. 24/8/1844: birth of Georges Biard. 24/ 2/1844: birth of Eugene Arnoux. 24/2/1848: Republic proclaimed; king flees. G-M, 31: '14 fevrier 1851'. FRI Mme Dambreuse disinherited by burning of Dambreuse's will: news from Adolphe Langlois. Strong-box, cf. cradle. Frederic Baslin born in Rue Marbeuf, Chaillot. Yellow-red object. 25/2/1843: birth of Alexandre-LouisEugene Vergeot, Louis Napoleon's son. 15/8/ 1769: Napoleon born. 15 Aug/ Sep 1810: Louise Colet born; her lawyer named Langlais. 25/2/1847: cachemire argument. Now 21st anniversary of Hernam!% opening. SAT
Frederic keeps Rosanette company until SUN evening.
31Day Jan Jul
Jan Jul
Jun Jun Dec Dec 10 20
14 24
ROSANETTE'S SAISIE OF 1851 (11,
150-2).
Athanase Gautherot's writ and threat of saisie tomorrow. Marengo and 'une tenebreuse affaire'. Arnoux compared to Hugo's 'Lui', 1842.
364 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Jan
Jan
Jun
Jul
Jul
Dec Dec
2
Jun
// 21
75 25
12
16
22
26
4
13 23
17 27
5
14 24
18 28
ROSANETTE'S SAISIE OF 1851 (11, 150-2).
No seizure; attempted fraud over Dittmers. Last sight of Arnoux (rosary; Mohammed). Louis Napoleon's last sight of Napoleon before Waterloo. 11/6/1841: Mourning band. 11/6/ 1851: Charles Hugo condemned to 6 months' imprisonment at end of censorship trial. 25/6/ 1848: Affre shot. 15/6/1851: Trinity Sunday, Ste Roseline. 11/6/1334: Translation of Roseline on day Trinity Sunday instituted. 11/ 6/1841: Arnoux buys grieving Rosanette/ Hortense. Syphilis crown/rosarium is time's punishment. 'Silent' day. 1815: Napoleon leaves for Waterloo; Louis Napoleon doesn't see him. 16/6/1811: Hortense's last appearance in public before birth of Morny. 'Silent' day in 1848 and here, but Dussardier's 27/6/51 saving of Rosanette on anniversary of portrait and poulette article. Leonie sends letters to Juliette, 1851. Louise Golet sends Musset's letters to Gustave, 1852. (17/27 Jun 1585). Gautherot's writ and Hortense Baslin (fraud). Dambreuse dinner, 1848. Juliette receives love letters, 1851. Marengo, Waterloo; Napoleon ordered to quit France.
32Day
Feb
Feb
Jun
Jun
DUSSARDIER
SAVES ROSANETTE/
HORTENSE,
Apr Apr Mar Mar 1851 (11, 152-3). 1
16
26
16
26
2
17
27
17
27
Dussardier learns that sale date is 30/6/1851; withdraws life savings of 4,000 francs. 26/6/ 1848: Affre dies. 26/6/51: Louise Colet ejected from Croisset. Saves Rosanette by giving 4,000 francs to Frederic. Redeems Leonie and whoever killed Affre. Dussardier: 'j'ai envie de me faire tuer'. (17/27 June 1585)
^Education sentimentaW (i86g) 18
28
18
28
19
29
19
2g
20
30
20
30
365
'Silent' day; but also revelation that Rosanette Bron is Hortense Baslin. Juliette Drouet receives letters from Leonie, 1851. 'Silent' day, but Louise Roque 'guillotined' in 1848. 1815: last of the Hundred Days. Sale avoided by Dussardier's gift, 1851. Hugo saved from Balzac's rivalry: in Bette, 30/6/1841 is police trap for Hulot and Valerie (Hugo and Leonie).
33Day
Oct
Oct
Apr Sep
Apr Apr Apr Sep Sep Sep
Oct
Oct
DEATH OF FREDERIC BASLIN, 1851 (11,153-6).
1
2
12
3
13 23
Mignot orders Arnoux to pay 12,000 francs in 24 hours.
2
3
13
4
14 24
Rosanette wins case against Arnoux; Pellering sees him in Rue Jacob. Child ill; Rosanette stands all night. 1834: Rosanette's defloration and Rue Transnonain (13-14/4).
3
4
14
5
15 25
Deaths of Frederic Baslin, Hortense Bonaparte, Lincoln. Mme Dambreuse learns of betrayal. Marie present/absent in Rue Paradis; Regimbart in rue de l'Empereur. (25 Sep = 5 Oct 1583; 5/15 Oct 1582) Mme Dambreuse pays for husband's funeral. 1793: Marie-Antoinette executed (at time of Dauphin's denunciation). Louis Napoleon sentenced to Ham in 1840. Max tells Gustave of Schlesingers' departure.
4
5
J
5
6
16 26
5
6
15
7
*7
'Silent' day.
6
7
17
8
18 28
Mme Dambreuse hires Deslauriers to prosecute the Arnoux.
366
Diachronic and synchronic charts 34-
Day
Sep Jan Mar Jul
May Dec Nov Jun
I
1
1
12
12
12
12
'LA VENTE DE MADAME ARNOUX' AND COUP D'ETAT, 1851 (11,157-60).
Auction: Mme Dambreuse buys casket and Frederic breaks with her. 1/12 Dec 1700. 12/22 Dec = 1 Jan 1583. Dussardier's carton and pipe, 1841. Arnoux's trick 1847. Coup d'etat. Deputies arrested. Champ de Mars, Arnoux with Bordelaise, 1847.
2
2
2
2
13
13
13
13
3 14
3 14
3 14
14
3
Frederic goes out. Workers won't protest. Arnoux with Rosanette after Champ de Mars, 1847.
4 15
4 15
4 14
4 15
'Silent' day. G-M, 46: 'jeudi 4 decembre 1851' in notes. 1/5/1847: Senecal dismissed unjustly. Boulevard deaths ended on this day.
5 16
5 16
16
5
Deslauriers m. Louise Roque. Senecal murders Dussardier. 5/12/1812: Napoleon deserts Grande Armee. 5/12/1835: Louise Revoil m. Hippolyte Colet on his birthday. 5/ 9/1840: Elisa Judee m. Maurice Schlesinger. 5/5/1807: Napoleon-Charles dies. 5/5/1821: Napoleon I dies. 5/5/1826: Empress Eugenie born. 5/16 Sep 1840: Cygne de la Croix and shared cloak: fraternity.
5
16
CHARTS: BOUVARD ET PECUCHET
I. Day
Feb/ Oct Apr/ Feb/ Oct Apr/ Mar Mar JOURNEY TO CHAVIGNOLLES, 20-9 MARCH 1842/ May Jun JUNE 1842 (11,207-8). Mar Apr May 2
3
H
29 24
20 10
Pecuchet leaves Paris 'le dimanche 20 marsv. 20 March 1842: Palm Sunday. Pecuchet writes name in plaster, cf. 23/2/1839: 'Institut de la rue du Platre'.
'Bouvard et Pecuchet3
367
2 0 / 6 / 1 7 8 9 : 'Serment du Jeu de Paume'. 2 0 / 6 / 1 7 9 1 : Flight to Varennes. 2 0 / 6 / 1 7 9 2 : Invasion of Tuileries. 20/3/1815: Napoleon arrives Tuileries. Hundred Days begin. 14/10/1066: Battle of Hastings. Norman Conquest. SUN 2
3
4
24
25
15
16
26
17
27
18
5 28
19
30 25
21 11
1
22
26
12
2 27
23 13
$ 2 4
22
MON
Broken cups near Gauburge. Bouvard leaves Paris by the wrong night coach after bibulous second farewell. 1 May/25 Feb: la sainte-Gauburge. 22/6/1815: Napoleon's final abdication. 22/3/1846: Caroline-Josephine dies. 22/3/1842: Stendhal suffers fatal stroke in Paris. 25/2/1848: News of Revolution arrives at Chavignolles. TUE Lost day for Pecuchet. Bouvard wakes up at Rouen Cathedral. Night coach full. Bouvard tells lies at Theatre des Arts. 26/2/1815: escape from Elba. 23/3/1850: Petit humiliated. 23/3/1842: Stendhal dies. WED Bouvard takes night coach from Rouen to Caen. 24/3/1846: death of Emma Bovary. THU
28
14
44 29
25 25 15
Bouvard arrives in Caen to find that packages sent by river have not arrived. Good Friday, 1842. Bouvard to theatre or first session with La Barbee. FRI
5
26 16
'Silent' day. 5/5/1821: Napoleon dies. 26/6/1848: atrocities after armistice. (16/26 Mar 1631)
30
21
Pecuchet climbing. 3 0 / 4 : Walpurgisnacht.
6 1
27 27 17
7
28
SAT
Packages arrive in Caen. Bouvard sends them on, saying that he will follow in a few hours, but he doesn't. Easter Sunday 1842: end of Holy Week. (17/27 Jun 1585) SUN Pecuchet gets lost and is rescued by Bouvard. Arrival at Chavignolles.
368 Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts Feb/ Oct
Apr/ Mar
JOURNEY TO CHAVIGNOLLES, 20-9 MARCH 1842/
Mar
May Jun
JUNE 1842 (11,207-8).
Apr May 2 10
4
23
8 3
18 2g 19
3/3/45 : Caroline m. Hamard.
MON
Cock crows just after midnight, and they take a stroll around the garden. Upon awakening, they meet Vaucorbeil and Gouys. 29/6: la saint-Pierre (Christ denied). TUE
2. Day
Jun
Jun
Mar Dec
Sep
Jan
Jun
Jun
BURNING
RICKS,
1844/1845/1846/1848
(11,
May 212-13). Aug 22
23
Bouvard decides on Clap-Mayer method of fermentation 22/8/1799: 'la poire est mure.5 G-M, 15, 34: 'agriculture 4.2-44', 'la 4e annee une belle recolte de froment'. (22 Dec = 1 Jan 1583) Meules/volcans in plaine denudee indicates 23 August; Volcanalia 23 May and 23 August. Tubilustrium: 23/3, 23/5, 23/6/1848: June Days' fighting begins. 23/6: Eve of la saintJean: bonfires. 2/9/1666: Great Fire of London. 2/9/1870: Louis Napoleon surrenders his sword on father's birthday. (23/8 = 2/ 9/1610) Bouvard's ne&r-renversement of Mme Bordin, 'les grains de ble vous cinglaient la figure comme des grains de plomb'. 6 months earlier Bouvard had refused taupier's services: vengeance. 2 years. (23 Aug = 2 Sep 1610)
'Bouvard et Pecuchet3
Day
369
Jun Jun
Jun Jun
Jun Jun
'JUNE DAYS' OF 1848 (1849/1850) (11,252-60).
2
3
4
12
13
14
Pecuchet at Hotel de Ville. 13/6/1849: Conservatoire incident. SUN
5 15
Silent day: 14-15/6/1849: Telite des bourgeois parisiens saccagea deux imprimeries' (11, 254).
6 16
Pecuchet witnesses Gorju's dismissal of Mme Castillon. Short hair, gold cross, cf. Empress Eugenie. TUE
Dec Dec Dec 48 49 50 'Un dimanche (c'etait dans les premiers jours
3
4
13
14
4
5
14
Day
de juin)' Vemeute de Chavignolles. Gorju defends
MON
Jul
Jul
Jul
GORJU'S ARREST FOR SEDITION, 1848 (1849/1850)
50
49
48
(11,253-4).
1
17
18
ig
2
18
19
20
Six weeks after Gorju's departure, he returns wounded to Chavignolles. Arrested for sedition. Pecuchet fails to defend him through sexual jealousy. Gorju/loup: 'Des eraflures et des contusions faisaient saigner son visage.' 18/7/1869: Bouilhet dies. G-G, 125: July 1850: Maurice Schlesinger condemned to 3 months' prison for criticising Prussian king's policies in an inn at Koesen. 19/7/1869: Flaubert receives telegramme re Louis Bouilhet's death. 19/7: Adonia. 18/7/1870: Papal infallibility declared. 19/7/1870: France declares war on Prussia. Gorju condemned to 3 months' prison, cf. Maurice/Judee. 20/7/1858: Louis Napoleon's secret meeting with Cavour. 20/7/1868: La Lanterne seized. Rochefort pursued. 20 Jun/Jul 1839: Bouvard receives inheritance.
370
Day
Diachronic and synchronic charts
Feb
Oct
Apr/ Mar
PETIT'S HUMILIATION IN 1850 (1848) (11,254-5).
May Jun 1
22
13
28
19
La saint-Joseph: pupils 'didn't give'. 19/3: Minerva's birthday: pupils/schoolmasters and patients/doctors give to Minerva (Medica). TUE
2
23
14
29
20
Bouvard and Pecuchet visit Petit to congratulate him on his political views after Bouvard's poplar is cut down. WED
3
24
15
30
21
Petit visits Bouvard and Pecuchet.
4
25
16
1
22
Silent day. 22/3/1846: Death of Caroline-Josephine, FRI 22 Mar/Jun: heirlooms smashed.
5
26
17
2
23
THU
Bouvard and Pecuchet witness Petit's humiliation by Jeufroy, who mentions Easter (31/3/ 1850) and Falloux Law (15/3/1850). Eve of Palm Sunday, 1850. SAT
6. Day
Sep
Oct
FAVERGES'S DEJEUNER, OCTOBER 1848/1850 (11,
256)^ 1
17 27
4 14 24
October sunshine after lunch for 17. 17/9/ 1848: by-elections for Constituent Assembly (13/ 5/1849: Election of Legislative Assembly). Reference to 31/5/50 suffrage law and 16/7/ 1850 censorship law beforehand, but problems raised and solutions suggested at lunch relate to those past events: Marescot says raise 'cens electoral' (31/5/50), Hurel 'supprimer la Chambre' (Rateau Proposition 29/ 1 /1849). Le monsieur de Cherbourg' is Louis Napoleon. Lavatio: 17/27 Mar/Sep = 4 Apr/ Oct.
(
Day
Feb/
Oct
Mar
Bouvard et Pecuchet'
371
Mar
Dec
COUP D'ETAT AND PECUCHET'S PASSION FOR
Jun
Jan
MELIE,I85I (11,258-9).
May Dumouchel's friend Varelot exiled. Pecuchet's 'journee perdue' in 1841/2.
I
26
17
23
2
2
27
18
24
3
Mme Bordin brings news of coup d'etat: miffed.
3
28
19
25
4
Silent day: boulevard deaths.
4
1
29
26
5
Chavignolles approves shootings on boulevards.
21
27
6
Placquevent warns Bouvard and Pecuchet to hold their tongues. Bouvard wants to sell up and leave; Pecuchet sees Melie drawing water.
8. Day
Mar Sep
Apr
PECUCHET'S DEPUCELAGE, 1852/1841 (11,261-2).
Oct Jul 1
8
21 24
28
1
8
/
8
Bouvard approaches Mme Bordin from behind as she is bending over to pick violets. It's a Thursday at the beginning of the month at budding time. Signing of contract fixed for following Thursday. Pecuchet lures Melie to cellar under pretext of counting bottles: Pecuchet's depucelage. Melie hides face, cf. Emma at La Vaubyessard and in forest: shows no lack of experience. 1/4 = 1/7: Pecuchet's syphilis diagnosed by Vaucorbeil. THU 1/4: swollen cow; peafowl. Thursday a week later, Bouvard furious: Mme Bordin wanted Les Ecalles as dowry, criticised Bouvard's paunch. Pecuchet has discovered a 'maladie secrete': THU Melie dismissed.
372
Day
1
2
Diachronic and synchronic charts
Aug/ Sep/ J u n / May/ MAGNETISM AND SWOLLEN COW, 1853/1854 (11,
Sep
Oct Jul
31
3°
1
1
1
3°
Apr 263). 31
/
Vaucorbeil is furious at seeing Bouvard and Pecuchet treating his patients, 'mais le hasard leur offrit une autre bete': dovetailing with yellow dog episode. Appletrees flowering. 6 a.m. summons, sun rising, cf. birth of Berthe Bovary 4 Apr/Jul 1841. 11, 293: appletrees flowering 1/4 (dendrochronolgy). Cow/hippo has strayed into clover (rut period). La Barbee then cow parallel to La Guerine then swollen cow on 1/4 in MB. Hippo reference: phlebotomie. Matieres jaunes:
Napoleon reported opening thigh wound 31/ 10/1819. Accouchement. 1/4/1852: Pecuchet seduces Melie in cellar; Mme Bordin bends over to pick violets. 1/4: peafowl in rut. (Era of Constantinople: 21 Mar = iApr/Sep)
10. Day
1
Feb/ Oct Mar
24
15 5
Apr/ Mar May Jun
30
21
2
25
12 6
1
22
3
26
17
2
23
NOTRE-DAME-DE-LA-DELIVRANDE AND SALE OF PROPERTY: 1861/1855/1857 (11,278-80).
Bouvard and Pecuchet leave for 43-km/ 12hour journey to church. G-M, 35: '1857'. 11/2/ 1858: Bernadette's vision, Feast of Appearance of Our Lady at Lourdes. Arrival by cabriolet. Reunion with Barberou after 20 years. Barberou swindled by Gouttman. Pecuchet lies for Bouvard over plaster Virgin. Marescot visits while they are away. 6/10/1872: pilgrimage of over 20,000 to Lourdes (F, 307). 6/4/1872: false date of Flaubert's mother's death after '33 hours' of suffering. Real date 7/4/1872: historical date of crucifixion. (6/16 Oct 1583 Tyrol) Arrival home in Chavignolles: perdue', 1841/2.
'journee
'Bouvard et PecucheV Day
Feb/
Oct
Mar
Apr/
Mar
May Jun
4
27
18
3
24
5
28
19
4
25
6
1
20
5
26
373
NOTRE-DAME-DE-LA-DELIVRANDE AND SALE OF
PROPERTY: 1861/1855/1857 (11,278-80).
Bouvard sells the estate to Mme Bordin. Silent day of Journey to Chavignolles. 5/5/1821: Napoleon's death.
7
2
21
6
27
8
3
22
7
28 Jeufroy's annual feast: Bougon, Pruneau, Cerpet. Comet seen over Europe 29/6/1861. Fete de la Vidange. 29/6/1815: end of Hundred Days. 23/10/ 4004: 'Creation'.
9
4
23 13
8
2g
10
5
24
9
3°
Bouvard feels better next day.
Day
Oct
Sep
Jul
Apr
PEAFOWL,
BOUVARD/BORDIN, 1861/1868 (11,
293-4)Appletrees in flower, primeveres / hyacinthes / viol-
1
1
1
1
/
ettes. Mme Bordin tells Bouvard he's missed the coach. Bouvard and Mme Bordin watch intercourse between peafowl. Palms quiver, horse drags off freshly hung washing, horse whipped. Evening: Adolphe v. Eugene.
12.
Day
1
Jan Jan Dec Dec 3O
29
VICTORINE SEDUCED BY ROMIGHE, 1868/1865/
1861/1859 (II, 299).
G-M, 35-6: '1868', 'a 14 ans, Victorine est perdue', n, 285: Victorine is 10 in winter of pilgrimage to Notre-Dame-de-la-Delivrande (1855/1857/1861).
374
Diachronic and synchronic charts
Day
Jan
Jan
Dec Dec
VICTORINE SEDUCED BY ROMICHE, 1868/1865/
1861/1859(11,299). 29-30/1/1853: Napoleon III marries Eugenie. 30/1/1859: 'Plonplon' marries Clothilde. Fournil: Fornacalia (5-17/2). Minotaur motif in Bonaparte marriages.
Day
Dec
Jan
Dec
EJECTION OF ST PETER AND SALE OF LES
ECALLES (1853 = 1842/1856 = 1851). St Peter thrown into compost heap; 20 apple trees knocked over in storm. Anniversary of news of father's death.
1
10
20
20
2
11
21
21
3
12
22
22
Damage evaluation continues. Gouy demands reduction in rent that evening. Bouvard and Pecuchet refuse.
4
13
23
23
Goulon finds in Guoys' favour; dinner inedible.
5
14
24
24
Vaucorbeil prescribes for Pecuchet's symptoms.
St Peter found in 12 pieces; Marescot proposes mortgage on farm and sale of Les Ecalles. Debts paid. Gouy tells of storm damage, including barn. Evaluation of damage.
Bibliography
Unless otherwise stated all books are published in Paris.
i. WORKS BY FLAUBERT Flaubert, G. Correspondance. 2 vols. Ed. J. Bruneau. Gallimard. 1972. Madame Bovary. Nouvelle Version pre'ce'de'e des scenarios inedits. E d . J. Pommier and G. Leleu. Jose Gorti. 1949. Oeuvres completes. 2 vols. Ed. B. Masson. 1964. Gustave Flaubert-George Sand. Correspondance. Ed. A. Jacobs. Flam-
marion. 1981. Carnets de travail. Ed. P-M. de Biasi. Balland. 1988. Correspondance. 9 vols. Conard. 1926-33. Correspondance. Supplement. 4 vols. Ed. R. Dumesnil, J. Pommier and G. Digeon. Gonard. 1954.
2. W O R K S CONCERNING FLAUBERT Bart, B. F. Flaubert. N.Y. Syracuse U.P. 1967. Bern, J. 'Sur des hiatus temporels dans I/Education sentimentale\ RHLF (juillet-aout 1980), 626-8. Bernheimer, C. 'Fetishism and Allegory in Bouvard et Pecuchet\ in Schor and Majewski (Eds.), Flaubert and Postmodernism, 160-76. Bopp, L. Commentaire sur Madame Bovary. Neuchatel. A la Baconniere. Bovet, E. 'Le Realisme de Flaubert5. RHL, 18 (1911), 1-36. Bruneau, J. Les Debuts litteraires de Gustave Flaubert, 1831-1845. Armand
Colin. 1962. Burns, C. A. 'The Manuscripts of Flaubert's Trois Contes\ French Studies (October 1954), 297-321. Butor, M. Improvisations sur Flaubert. Le Sphinx. 1984. 375
376
Bibliography
Clebert, J-P. Louise Colet ou la Muse. Presses de la Renaissance. 1986. (Cle86) Cogny, P. L3Education sentimentale de Flaubert. Le Monde en creux. Larousse. 1975. Descharmes, R. Autour de Bouvard et Pecuchet. Librairie de France. 1921 Douchin,J-L. La Vie erotique de Flaubert. Paris. Carrere-Pauvert. 1984. Dumesnil, R. Le Grand Amour de Flaubert. Geneva. Editions du milieu du monde. 1945. (D45) Guy de Maupassant. Armand Colin. 1933. (D33) Gustave Flaubert. VHomme et Voeuvre. Desclee de Brouwer. 1947. (D47) La Vocation de Flaubert. Gallimard. 1961. Fay, P. B. and Coleman, A. Sources and Structures of Flaubert's Salammbo. Elliott Monographs 2. 1914. (F&C) Frejlich, H. Les Amants de Mantes. S.F.E.L.T. 1935. Gerard-Gailly, E. Le Grand Amour de Flaubert. Aubier. 1944. (G-G) Gothot-Mersch, G. 'Aspects de la temporalite dans les romans de Flaubert', in Flaubert: la dimension du texte. Ed. P. M. Wetherill, 6-55. Ed. La Production du sens chez Flaubert. 1975. (G-M) Green, A. Flaubert and the Historical Novel. Salammbo Reassessed. Cambridge U.P. 1982. Jackson, J. P. Louise Colet et ses amis litteraires. New Haven. Yale U.P. 1937La Capra, D. Madame Bovary on Trial. Cornell U.P. 1982. Lottman, H. R. Gustave Flaubert. Tr. M. Veron. Paris. Fayard. 1989. Naaman, A. Y. Les Debuts de Gustave Flaubert et sa technique de la description. Nizet. 1962. Oliver, H. Flaubert and an English Governess. The Quest for Juliet Herbert. Oxford. Clarendon. 1980. Sagnes, G. 'Tentations balzaciennes dans le manuscrit de UEducation sentimental^. UAnnee balzacienne (1981), 53—64. Sartre, J-P. Les Mots. Gallimard. 1964. LTdiot de lafamille. Gustave Flaubert de 1821 a 184J. 3 vols. Gallimard. 1971-2. Starkie, E. Flaubert: the Making of the Master. Harmondsworth. Penguin. Steegmuller, F. Flaubert and Madame Bovary. Boston. Sentry. 1970. Wetherill, P. M. (Ed.) Flaubert: la dimension du texte. Communications du congres de Manchester. Manchester U.P. 1982. 3. NAPOLEONIC BACKGROUND Agulhon, M. Marianne au combat. Ulmagerie et la symbolique republicaines de iy8g a 1880. Flammarion. 1979.
Bibliography
377
184.8 ou Vapprentissage de la Republique. 1848-1852. Seuil. 1983. Aretz, G. Napoleon and his Women Friends. London. Allen & Unwin. 1927. Belloc, H. Napoleon. London. Cassell. 1932. Bernard, J. F. Talleyrand. A Biography. London. Collins. 1973. Bernhardy, F. Eugene de Beauharnais. Perrin. 1973. Brodsky, A. Imperial Charade. N.Y. Bobbs-Merill. 1978. Castelot, A. Napoleon. N.Y. Harper & Row. 1971. Chateaubriand, F. Memoirs. Tr. R. Baldick. Harmondsworth. Penguin. 1965. Collingham, H. The July Monarchy. A Political History of France. 18301848. London. Longman. 1988. Connelly, O. Napoleon's Satellite Kingdoms. N.Y. Free Press. 1965. (Con65) The Gentle Bonaparte. A Biography of Joseph, Napoleon's Elder Brother. N.Y. Macmillan. 1968. (Con86) Corley, T. A. B. Democratic Despot. A Life of Napoleon III. London. Barrie & Rockliff. 1961. Cronin, V. Napoleon. London. Collins. 1971. Delderfield, R. F. Imperial Sunset. The Fall ofNapoleon. London. Hodder and Stoughton. 1968. De Luna, F. The French Republic under Cavaignac: 1848. Princeton U.P. 1969Denholm, A. France in Revolution. 1848. Sydney. Wiley. 1972. Duff, D. Eugenie and Napoleon III. London. Collins. 1978. (DD) Duveau, G. 1848: the Making of a Revolution. Tr. A. Carter. London. Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1967. Fleishmann, H. An Unknown Son of Napoleon. London. Eveleigh Nash. 1914. Gooch, G. P. The Second Empire. London. Longmans, i960. Guedalla, P. The Second Empire. London. Hodder & Stoughton. 1937. Hemmings, F. Culture and Society in France: i848-i8g8. London. Batsford. 1972. HeroldJ. C. The Mind ofNapoleon. N.Y. Columbia U.P. 1955. Hudson, W. H. The Man Napoleon. London. Harrap. 1915. Jardin, A. and Tudesq. A. J. La France des Notables. 2 vols. 1973. (J&T) Kemble, J. Napoleon Immortal. The Medical History and Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. London. Murray. 1959. Leroy, A. The Empress Eugenie. Tr. A. Cope. Geneva. Heron Books. 197? Mackenzie, N. The Escape from Elba. The Fall and Flight of Napoleon. 1814-13. Oxford U.P. 1982. Mansel, P. Louis XVIII. London. Blond & Briggs. 1981.
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Bibliography
Murat, C. My Memoirs. London. Eveleigh Nash. 1910. Oman, C. A History of the Peninsular War. 4 vols. Oxford. Clarendon. 1902.
Orieux, J. Talleyrand. The Art of Survival. Tr. P. Wolf. N.Y. Knopf. J 974Pflaum, R. The Emperor's Talisman. The Life of the Due de Morny. N.Y. Meredith. 1968. (RP) Raitt, A. W. Prosper Merimee. London. Eyre & Spottiswoode. 1970. Rose, J. H. Life ofNapoleon. 2 vols. London. Bell. 1924. Smith, W. H. C. Napoleon III. London. Wayland. 1972. (WHCS) Soboul, A. La Civilisation et la Revolution Frangaise. 3 vols. Arthaud. 1978-83. Turnbull, P. Napoleon's Second Empress. London. Michael Joseph. 197*Williams, R. L. The World of Napoleon III. 1851-1870. N.Y. Free Press. X 6 9 5The Mortal Napoleon III. Princeton U.P. 1971. Wilson, R. M. The Empress Josephine. Portrait of a Woman. London. Eyre & Spottiswoode. 1952. Young, N. The Growth of Napoleon. A Study in Environment. London. Murray. 1910. (NY) Young, P. Napoleon's Marshals. Reading. Osprey. 1973. (PY) Zweig, S. Joseph Fouche. The Portrait of a Politician. Tr. E. & C. Paul. N.Y. Blue Ribbon Books. 1930. (orig. Leipzig. 1929). 4. WORKS ON TIME Attali, J. Histoires du Temps. Fayard. 1982. Attwater, D. A Dictionary of Saints. Harmondsworth. Penguin. 1965. Bickerman, E. Chronology of the Ancient World. London. Thames & Hudson. 1968. 1980. Bond, J. J. Handy-Book of Rules and Tables for Verifying Dates within the Christian Era. London. Bell. 1889 (4th edition). (JJB) Chambers, R. A Book ofDays. 2 vols. London & Edinburgh. Chambers. 1863. (RC) Delaney, J. J. A Dictionary of Saints. Surrey. Kaye & Ward. 1982. Frewin, A. The Book ofDays. London. Collins. 1979. (AF) Ginzel, F. K. Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie. 3 vols. Leipzig. 1906-14. (G) Martin-Chauffier,J. Sainte Roseline. I26j-ij2g. Toulon. MICLO. 3eme edition. N.D. Montreynaud, F. et al. Dictionnaire de proverbes et dictons. Les Dictionnaires Robert. 1986.
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Morris, D. The Book ofAges. N.Y. Viking. 1984. Nicolas, H. The Chronology of History. London. Longman. 1833. Nilsson, M. P. Primitive Time Reckoning. London. Lund. 1920. Ovid Fasti. Ed. J. G. Fraser. Harvard U.P. 1931. Metamorphoses. Ed. M. Innes. Harmondsworth. Penguin. 1955. Parke, H. W. Festivals of the Athenians. London. Thames & Hudson. 1977Pedech, P. La Methode historique de Poly be. Belles-Lettres 1964. Pierrard, P. Dictionnaire des prenoms et des saints. Larousse. 1974. Richmond, B. Time Measurement and Calendar Construction. Leiden. Brill. 1956. Samuel, A. A. Greek and Roman Chronology. Munich. Oscar Beck. Scullard, H. Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic. London. Thames & Hudson. 1981. Tilly, B. Varro the Farmer; a Selection from the Res Rusticae. London. University Tutorial Press. 1973. Voragine, J. de The Golden Legend. N.Y. Longmans, Green. 1941. Walbank, F. W. A Historical Commentary on Polybius. 2 vols. Oxford. Clarendon. 1957. Williams, N. Chronology of the Expanding World: 14.92-1762. London. Barrie & RocklifF. 1969. (NW69) Chronology of the Modern World: 1762—ig6j. Harmondsworth. Penguin. 1975. (NW75) ONOMASTIC WORKS Dauzat, A. and Rostaing, C. Dictionnaire etymologique des noms de lieu en France. Larousse. 1963. (D&R) Dauzat, A. Les Noms de lieu: origine et evolution. Delagrave. 1963. Les Noms de personnes. Delagrave. 1956. La Toponymiefrancaise. Payot. i960. Dunkling, L. and Gosling, W. The Facts on File Dictionary of First Names. N.Y. Facts on File. 1983. (D&G) Jacobs, N. J. Naming-Day in Eden. London. Victor Gollancz. 1958. Lebel, P. Les Noms de personnes en France. P.U.F. 1962. Long, H. A. Personal and Family Names. London. Hamilton & Adams. 1883. Longnon, A. Les Noms de lieu de la France. N.Y. Burt Franklin. 1973. (AL) Negre, E. Les Noms de lieux en France. Armand Colin. 1963. Rostaing, C. Les Noms de lieux. P.U.F. 1961. Yonge, C. History of Christian Names. London. Macmillan. 1884. (CY)
380
Bibliography O T H E R WORKS
Addison, C. Y. ' "When in Rome ...": the Chronology of Sarrasine\ In Cryle, P. M., Freadman, A. S. & Lacherez, J-C. (Eds.), In the Place of French: Essays in and around French Studies. Mt Nebo. Boombana Publications. 1992, 69-92. Bachelard, G. La Poetique de Vespace. P.U.F. 1972. Balzac, H. de La Comedie humaine. 12 vols. Pleiade. Gallimard. 1976—81. Baring-Gould, S. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. London. Longmans, Green. 1892. (B-G) Baudouin, C. Psychanalyse de Victor Hugo. Geneva. Mont-Blanc. 1943. Belmont, N. Mythes et croyances dans Vancienne France. Flammarion. 1973. Bowman, F. P. 'The Poetic Practices of Vigny's Poemes Philosophiques\ MLR 60 (July 1965), 359-65. Brandes, G. The French Romantics. N.Y. Russell. 1966. Buisseret, D. Henry IV. London. Allen & Unwin. 1984. Burkert, W. Greek Religion. Archaic and Classical. Tr. J. Raffin. Oxford. Blackwell. 1985 (orig. 1977). Chevalier, J. et al. Dictionnaire des symboles. Lafont. 1969. Cirlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols. Tr. J. Sage. 1971. Clebert, J-P. Bestiairefabuleux. Albin Michel. 1971. (CI671) Creuzer, F. Les Religions de VAntiquite considerees principalement dans leurs formes symboliques et mythologiques. 4 vols. in 10. Tr./Ed. J. D. Guignault. Treuttel et Wurtz. 1825-1851. Fortescue, W. Alphonse de Lamartine. A Political Biography. London. CroomHelm. 1981. Frame, D. The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic. New Haven. Yale U.P.1978. Frazer, J. G. The Golden Bough. A Study of Magic and Religion (abridged edition). London. Macmillan, 1974. Freud, S. The Pelican Freud Library. 10 vols. Ed. J. Strachey and A. Richards. Harmondsworth. Penguin. 1977, 217-25. Goncourt, E. &J. de Journal: Memoires de la vie litteraire. 4 vols. Fasquelle & Flammarion. 1956. Hangen, E. C. Symbols: Our Universal Language. McCormick-Armstrong. Wichita, Kansas. 1962. Hugo, V. Oeuvres completes. 16 vols. Le Club francais du livre. 1967-70. (VH) Ihne, W. The History of Rome. 5 vols. London. Longmans, Green. 1871. Lasowski, P. W. Syphilis. Essai sur la litterature franqaise du XIXe siecle. Gallimard. 1982. Livy The Early History of Rome. Tr. A. de Selincourt. Penguin Classics. 1986.
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McCulloch, F. Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries. University of North Carolina Press. 1962. Maurois, A. Promethee ou la vie de Balzac. 1965. Miquel, P. Les Guerres de Religion. Fayard. 1980. Ogilvie, R. M. Introduction to Livy: Rome and Italy. Tr. B. Radice. London. Penguin. 1982. Pardoe, J. The Life ofMarie deMedicis. 3 vols. London. Bentley. 1890. Pearson, H. Henry ofNavarre. London. Heinemann. 1963. Pliny Natural History. 10 vols. Tr. D. E. Eichholz. London. Heinemann. 1940-63. Plutarch Moralia. 16 vols. Tr. F. H. Sandbach. London. Heinemann. 1927-1969. Polybius The Rise of the Roman Empire. Ed. F. Walbank. Harmondsworth. Penguin. 1979. Rahner, H. Greek Myths and Christian Mystery. London. Burns & Oates. Richardson, J. Victor Hugo. London. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1966. (JR) Rowland, B. Birds with Human Souls. A Guide to Bird Symbolism. University of Tennessee Press. 1978. Sebillot, P. Le Folk-Lore de France. 4 vols. Maisonneuve. 1968 (orig. 1904-7). Smith, E. C. American Surnames. Philadelphia. Chilton. 1969. (ECS) Smith, R. B. Carthage and the Carthaginians. London. Longmans. 1894. (RBS) Sophocles The Theban Plays. Tr. E. F. Watling. Harmondsworth. Penguin. 1947. Suetonius The Twelve Casars. Tr. R. Graves. Harmondsworth. Penguin. 1957. Toesca, M. Un Dernier Amour: Alfred de Vigny et Augusta. Albin Michel. 1975. Troyat, H. Catherine la Grande. Flammarion. 1977. Warner, M. Alone of All Her Sex. The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary. London. Quartet. 1978. (MW) Wilkins, E. The Rose-Garden Game. A Tradition of Beads and Flowers. N.Y. Herder. 1969. Williams, R. L. The Horror of Life. London. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1980. (RLW) Zipes, J. The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood. Bergin Garvey. Mass. 1983. 5. REFERENCE TEXTS The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Ed. N. G. L. Hammond, H. H. Scullard. Second edition. Clarendon. (1970) 1973.
382
Bibliography
The Oxford English Dictionary Petit Larousse Robert, P. Dictionnaire alphabetique et analogique de la langue jranqaise. 6
vols + supp. Robert. 1974. 6. O T H E R SOURCES Julian Barnes's television documentary, Flaubert's Parrot (BBC, 1983) is the source for the names 'Eugene Josephine Caroline Flaubert' on the gravestone in Rouen cemetery. For the timing of solar and lunar phenomena, I have used information derived from the computer disk Sky clock: An Electronic Ephemeris. by Pierre Brind'Amour (Ottawa, 1988).
Index
Abel 57 Achille, saint 66 Acragas103 Acrocorinth 105 Actium, battle of 185 Adolphe 216, 257 Adolphe, St 79, 99, 216, 219, 224 Adonis 75 Aegates Islands, battle of 109, no, 116, 118 Aelian 42 Aesculapius 95 Afire, Denis Auguste, Archbishop 102, 171, 178 Africa 19, 216 Agnes, St 32 Albret, Jeanne d' 108, 109 Alexander I, Czar 106, 107, 108, 115, 120, 122, 122, 278 Alexander III (the Great) of Macedon 196 Alfred 225-31 All Fools' Day 209, 223 All Saints' Day 66 allusion, date rendered through literary 206 Aloysius, St 168 Amboise 74, 87, 243 Amiens 107 Ancients and Moderns, quarrel of 43, 44 Angeronalia 277 anniversaries, cult of 9, 20, 83 anniversary children n, 76 Annunciation 57, 79 Anthesterion 93 Antony, Mark 115, 118 Apocalypse, Beasts of 104 Apollon 103 Apollonius and tigress 12 Apollyon 104
Aratus 105 Aristophanes 255 Armenian epoch 34 arsenic 78, 222, 253 L'Art de verifier les dates 2, 3, 200
Artemis, festival of 35, 58, 66 Assembly, invasion of (1848) 167, 175 Assumption 61-2, 248, 250 Athanase, St 176-7 Athenian calendar 2, 3 see also Thargelia; Thesmophoria Attis 77, 141, 160, 164, 181 Augsburg 143 augury 168 Auguste 231-9 Augustus, Emperor 170, 185, 200, 233-4, 236 Aurora Borealis 25, 51 Austerlitz 271 Babylonian calendar 5 baldness 207-8 Balzac, Honore de 135-6, 153, 159, 183, 196 Comedie humaine 17 La Cousine Bette 136, 178-9 La Muse du Departement 36
Treize8$, i n , 180, 266 Barthelemy, St 82, 109 Baudelaire, Charles 206-7 Baylen, battle of 103, 104, 122 Beauharnais, Alexandre de 274 Beauharnais, Eugene de 148, 198 Beauharnais, Hortense-Eugenie de 269 Beauharnais, Josephine see Josephine, Empress Beauharnais family 239-53, 277, 280-1 see also individual members
383
384
Index
Bede 65 Beethoven, Ludwig von 202 Behemoth 117, 118 Belloc, H. 103 Beltane 56, 92 Beranger, Pierre Jean de 140, 207, 210 Berry, Charles Ferdinand, Due de 133 Berthe/Perchta 51, 52, 58, 60 Bessieres, Jean Baptiste 227, 228, 274-5, 277 bestiaries, medieval 25-6, 121 Biard, Leonie d'Aunet 81, 136, 137, 177-8, 179 de Biasi 1, 21 birth date as indictment of parents' sexuality 11, 76, 146 double 7, 15, 16, 17, 123, 135 {see also Flaubert, Gustave: birth) bissextile 143, 224
Blood, Day of (Attis festival) 64, 77, 141 Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Feast of the Precious 210 Boileau, Nicolas 43 Bonaparte (Murat), Caroline 79, 106, 126 Bonaparte, Hortense 159, 167, 177, 234-5 and Louis Bonaparte 163, 268, 279 death 76 paternity of children 167, 270, (see also Napoleon III: conception) Bonaparte, Jerome, King of Westphalia 145. 272 Bonaparte, Joseph 99, 108 Bonaparte, Leon 228, 274, 279 Bonaparte, Louis 158, 268, 272, 279 Bonaparte, Napoleon-Charles 161, 163, 169, 202 Bonaparte, Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul 212, 213, 252 Bonaparte, Napoleon-Louis 147 Bonaparte family 239-53, 270-8 see also individual members
Bouilhet, Louis 214, 215, 225 and TSA 37, 144 GF's tributes to dead 187-90, 194-5 Boulanger, Gustave-Rodolphe 67 Bourbon, Antoine de 108 Brault, Eleanora Marie (Mme Gordon) 147 Breze, Louis de 61 BufFon, George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de 22, 82
Bull of Phalaris 103 Buonaparte, Maria Letizia 158, 272 Cabires 95, 124 Cabrera 104 cachemire motif 10, 35, 142, 150, 151, 154, 166, 198, 211, 223, 224, 271, 273 Caesar, Julius 115, 118, 185 Cain and Abel 57 calendars 2, 3, 9 Cambrai 107 Cambremer de Croixmare, Charlotte 17 Canaanites 245 calendar 89, 98 Care, Alphonse 40, 228 Caristia 161, 162, 164, 247, 277 Carnival 51 Carthage: meaning of name 99, 103 Castor and Pollux 196, 227 cathedral 237 Catherine II (the Great), Czarina 108 Cavaignac, Godefroy 102, 171, 173, 202, 242 Cavour, Count Camillo Benso di 196 Cecile, St 75, 137, 182, 185-6 Celtic year 56 censorship 5-6, 73-4, 139, 188, 196, 205 circumvention of 156, 282 Hugo on 79 self- 30, 49-50 centaur, Chiron 92 Cerberus 162 Ceres, rites of 54 see also Demeter Cervantes, Miguel de 38, 139, 235 Champ de Mars 4, 156 Chandeleur, La 60, 77, 79, 93-4, 219 Changarnier, Nicolas Anne Theodule 156, 175 Chaperon rouge, Le Petit 64, 80, 84-5, 86, 128 Charlemagne, Emperor 185 Chateaubriand, Francois Rene, Vicomte de 122,133 Cheruel, Pierre Adolphe 3 Chevalier, Ernest 3, 4, 5, 12, 232 Chiron the Centaur 92 Christian era, abolition of 89, 200 Christmas 3, 51, 92, 109, 185, 196, 199 chronicles of France 50 Claire, St 61 Classicism vs Romanticism 33, 37, 140
Index Clement of Alexandria 185, 196 Cleophas, St 82 coach journeys 14, 15, 26, 74, 75, 143, 144, 147, 198, 201 Colet, Hippolyte 130, 220 Colet, Louise (nee Reviol) birth 17, 130 and ESi 22, 27, 35 GF's letters to 47, 81 GF's relationship with 8, 19, 178, 225, 226, 228-9 marriage 130, 184, 220 and Musset 178, 225, 226, 228-9 nickname, Melusine 256 pregnancy 27, 40 reading of poem to Academie 226 College Royal de Rouen 33 colours and Bonaparte theme 239-46, 249 ESi 34-5, 39, 42-3, 45 £,SlI22 see also ermine; jaundiced complexion; weasel comet (1861) 215 Cornices Agricoles 50, 61-2, 66, 247, 248 Commanville, Ernest 12, 210 Commune, Paris 202 conception, immaculate 141, 255, 258 Concorde, Fete de la 228 conflated/doubled characters 107-9 Constant, Benjamin 27 Constantine XI, Emperor 278 Constantinople Era of 48, 49, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 78, 135 Fall of 278 Coptic calendar 9, 60, 227 Cordoba 123 coup d'etat {Dec. 1851) 53, 85-6, 154, 155-6, 173, 179, 180, 188, 235, 272 Cowley, 1st Earl (Henry Richard Charles Wellesley) 212 Creation 83, 99, 197, 255 Creuzer, F. 46 Crucifixion 77, 79, 96, 153, 164, 223, 251 Cybele 64, 77, 96, 124, 223 cycles, historical 105 Cygne de la Croix (fictional inn) 218, 269 Czemicheff, Prince 278 danger, time and 5-6, 221-2 day, definition of 6, 7, 9
385
December/September correlation 69-70, 72, 190 Delacroix, Eugene 143, 165, 182, 267 Delphi 157, 185 Demeter the Black 260-1 Demeter Chloe 64, 84, 260 Denis, St 203 Denuelle, Eleonore 147, 152, 279 deus absconditus 57, 267
Diana, festival of 35, 58, 61, 66 Dictionnaire des idees regues 121, 268, 269
Diocletian, Emperor 124 Domitian, Emperor 119 Drouet, Juliette 177-8 Du Camp, Maxime 20, 40, 82, 163, 209, 231 rejection of TSA 37, 144 Dumas, Alexandre 139, 140, 194 Dupont de PEtang, Pierre Antoine 104, eagles 168, 185 Easter 3, 77, 109, 138, 205-6 eclipse, solar 59 Eden 3, 60 eggs, wind 255 Egypt calendar (solar) 89, 96-7, 121, 200 Napoleon leaves 163, 169 elephant 117, 121 Eleusinian Mysteries 64, 93, 94, 184 Elisabeth, St 177 elopements 41, 48, 220 Emma/Emilie 35, 253-63 Enghien, Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, Due d' 120, 122, 194 England; Gregorian calendar 139 Epictetus 2 equinoxes 3 autumn 64, 73, 89, 184 Julian calendar 92 in Salammbo 89, 93, 95, 98, 109, 128 spring 58, 70, 73, 89, 93, 95, 193 Erfurt 197 zrmmz/hermine 22, 25-6, 31, 32, 34-5, 42-3, 46-7, 262 Eryx88, 118 Eschmoun 95 Eugene 217, 224-5, 257 Eugenie, Empress 202, 252 Faunus, fauns 80, 181, 276
386
Index
Felicity, St 261 Feralia 161, 277 financial year 6, 49, 70-1 fishbone calendar 88, 89-90, 100, 102, 114 fishbone pattern peachtrees 203-4 five, number 226-7 five-day runs 4-5, 137, 178, 222 Flaubert, Achille 12, 25, 76, 188, 194, 232 as doctor 163, 164, 247 Flaubert, Achille-Cleophas and Un Parjum a sentir 233
birth 11, 14 death 9, 11, 13, 41, 47, 66, 148, 187-8 marriage date 11, 76 and incest 66 return of spirit 162 Flaubert, Anne-Justine-Caroline (nee Fleuriot) 11, 17, 25, 153, 261 death 12, 210 marriage 11, 76 Flaubert, Caroline 11, 12, 76, 159, 182, 203, 224 Flaubert (Hamard), Caroline-Josephine !3> 47> 232 birth 11, 69 death 9, 11, 12, 15, 16, 41, 148, 160, 161, 162, 163, 181, 197, 199, 247 marriage 12, 145 name 12, 15, 217 Flaubert, Emile-Cleophas 11, 12, 13, 76 FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE
baptism 13, 149-50, 170, 234 birth 11, 13, 34, 39, 66, 97, 123, 133, 143, 147, 148, 169, 171, 274; certificate 11, 13
conception 41, 48, 274 correspondence 9 crise nerveuse (1844) 9, 30, 72, 77 legal studies 144 majority, official 41, 48, 72 name, significance of 263-9 scar 265 sexual initiation 18-19, 35, 160, 183 syphilis 19-20, 142, 209
friendship in 125; on Henri of Navarre 109; journey to Chavignolles 4, 12, 19, 75, 170, 190, 201, 204, 211; Louis Napoleon in 235, 249, 250-3; Melie character 253-60; on Olympiads 184; opening date 143, 183, 200; parallel with Salammbo 90; solar cycle 184; on Talleyrand no; tenday runs 201-2; time leaps 9; 12/ 13 variations 14-15; venereal disease 153-4, !76> 188, 193, 206, 207-10, 211, 223, 254, 256, 276 Le Candidat 156 carnets de travail 2, 3, 21, 184, 199-200 Le Chateau des Coeurs 229-30, 268-9 Chronique normand 264
Un Coeur Simple 13, 193, 208, 249-50, 260, 261, 265, 268 La Decouverte de la vaccine 225, 247 Deux Amours et deux cercueils 232 L'Education sentimentale 1 22-47, 142;
December/January equivalence 190; false completion date 22-3, 27, 44; and GF's autobiography 25; six-month discrepancy 34; solar cycle 184 L'Education sentimentale 11 16-17,
130-86; Alfred-Frederic relationship 226-30; cachemire motif see separate entry; close 200,
206, 208; colours 22;five-and tenday runs 4, 137, 178; five, number, 4, 226-7; holes in time 12, 142, 145, 180; homosexuality 183; incest theme 270-8; names of characters 184-6, 269; Oedipus theme 266-7; Napoleon references 4, 147, 182; six-month displacement 5; solar cycle 184; suppressions of time 8-9, 15, 1312; 12/13 date, variations on 13-14 Herodias 237-8, 241, 265
Agonies 280
L Interdiction 21 Inventio Sanctae Crucis 91 La Legende de saint Julien VHospitalier
Bouvard et Pecuchet 190-215; awareness of chronology 2; cornets 184, 199-200; censorship 188; December/January equivalence 190;five-and ten-day runs 4-5, 222; Flaubert family names 269;
123, 251, 265; dates 9, 13, 14; 'Gustave' 237, 238 Lqys XI264 Madame Bovary 48-87; approximate chronological terms 6; Blind Man 4> !5> 5°> 75> 8o> 84> 86> 87> l8l >
WORKS
Index 240; censorship 139; colours, and Bonaparte 50, 61, 239, 240; death of Emma 20, 60, 77-9, 99, 219, 220, 222, 224; financial year 6, 70-1; names 50; Oedipus theme 264-5; opening date 197; solar cycle 184; time leaps 9; trial of 212, 213, 221-2, 250, 252 Memoires d'unfou 17 Le Moine des Chartreux 264 Mort du Due de Guise 265 Novembre 20, 138, 238, 262, 275 Un Parfum a sentir 232-3, 264 La Peste a Florence 264 Quidquid volueris 11, 76, 244—5, 2 ^ 8 Rome et les Cesars 243
Salammbo 2, 88-129; beginning date 88-9, 200-1; Bonapartist theme 99-100, 102-4, IO5> IO7> "3-i4> 118, 121-3, 126, 128, 240, 241, 251; conflated/double characters 107-9; equinoxes and solstices 89, 92, 93, 94-5, 98, 109, 128; fishbone calendar 88, 89-90, 100, 102, 114;five-and ten-day runs 4, 5, 91; marriage and murder at end 93, 114, 120, 126, 127, 128, 201; 12/ 13 date, variations on 13, 96-7 Le Sexefaible 231, 268, 278-80 La Tentation de saint Antoine 2, 176,
238, 276; rejection 37-8, 43-4, 144 Trois Contes 237, 238, 249-50 Flaubert, Jules-Alfred 11, 12, 203, 215 Flaubert, Julie 12 Flaubert, Juliette 12 Flaubert, Nicolas 15, 41 Flaubert family 8, 11-21, 75-6, 213-14, 267-9 Fleuriot, Anne-Justine-Caroline see under Flaubert Flobert, St 73 Floribert, St 128 Fontainebleau 122, 273 fools, festivals of 74, 205, 209, 223 Fornicalia 74 fortnight as 'quinze jours' 6 Fortuna Virilis 5
Foucaud, Eulalie 18, 38 Foucault, Elisa see under Schlesinger Fouche,Joseph 102, 105, i n , 112-14, 118, 143, 178 four hours, periods of 7, 51, 73
387
fox, Fox 38-9, 44-7, 113 Francis of Assisi, St 179 Fraternite, Fete de la 228 Frederic; GF's use of name 225-31 Fualdes, Antoine 194 Gabriel, Angel 141 Gall, St 206 gardes mobiles 171, 173
Gautherot, St 177 Genevieve, St 163, 177 George, St 60 Gertrude, St 52 gestation period 60, 167, 168, 179, 195, 199 Gethsemane, Garden of 93 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 181, 237 Golden Fleece constellation 165 Goncourt, Jules de 190, 195 Gothot-Mersch, Claudine i r 4, 8 Gourgaud-Dugazon, Gaspard 3 Grande Armee 83, 85, 123 Napoleon deserts 50, 75-6, 84, 87, 169, 180,243-4 Greece, ancient 9, 95, 185 see abo Athens and individualfestivals and gods
Gregorian calendar 3, 23-5, 236, 274 in Augsburg 143 Bull announcing 164 in England 38, 139 and ES11 177 and MB 48, 54, 63, 70, 78 in Prussia 136 Punic calendar compared 100 in Russia 165 Grimm, Jakob and Wilhelm 84-5, 86 Gustave 231-9 Gustave, St 232 Hallowe'en 53-4 Ham, fortress of 159, 198, 273 Hamard, Caroline-Josephine see under Flaubert Hamard, Desiree-Caroline 11, 12, 15-16, 32, 160, 210, 221, 236 Hamard, Emile 12 145 harvest 253-4 Hastings, Battle of 196-7 Hebrew calendar 89, 98 Henri de Navarre 115, 106-9 Henry V 156, 175
388
Index
Herbland, St 76 Hercules 133 Hermeline, Dame 25-6, 34, 262 hermine see ermine
Herminie 253, 280 Hernani, premiere of 33 Hilaria 77, 79, 223 Hippolyte/Hippolytus 58, 61, 66 Holy Week 205-6 Homer 86, 93, 162-3 homosexuality 17, 19, 20, 78, 92, 125, 183, 208 horses 156, 270-1, 273, 280-1 Hortense 269-81 Huber, Aloysius 101, 167 Hugo, Charles 176 Hugo, Leopoldine 89, 143 Hugo, Victor Balzac and 179 birth 198 and ESn 135-6, 139 exile in Jersey 144, 252 and Leonie Biard 81, 136, 177-8, 220 on Louis Napoleon 207, 234 maiden speech to Peers 79 sexual morality 81-2 WORKS
Les Burgraves 140 Les Chdtiments 104
Lui 135 'huit jours' (week) 6, 24, 208 Hundred Days 4, 172, 178, 193, 194, 202 end 67, 211, 214, 260 Huss, John 168 Illustre Theatre 53, 85 imitatio Christi 234
Immaculate Conception 141, 255, 258 impersonality 1, 2, 8 incest 49-50, 66, 76, 158, 270-8 Index, Vatican 195 Indictions 3, 199, 200 Inexpiable War 94 Invalides, Les 150 Islamic calendar 176, 208 Jacques, St 154 jaundiced complexion Bonapartist connection 50, 74, 78, 79, 162, 163, 168, 211, 212, 245-6, 248 and syphilis 207-8 John the Baptist, St 92, 95, 140
John XXII, Pope 177 Josephine de Beauharnais, Empress (nee Marie Josephine Rose Tascher de la Pagerie) birthday 150, 170, 273 date of liaison with Napoleon 277 divorce 126, 148, 170, 199, 270, 275 end of life 277-8 false birthdate 199, 269-70, 275 Napoleon's letter about adultery 141 as Rose 269-70 Judas 161-2, 180 Judee, Elisa see under Schlesinger Judee, Jacques-Emile/Emile-Jacques !7-l8> 35> 141-2, i37> 245 death 25, 28, 68, 159, 219 Jules, St 39 Julian calendar 3, 23-5, 92, 109, 143, 185 replacement see Gregorian calendar Julien, St 14, 123 June Days 102, 156, 171, 260 Juno Februata 79 Jupiter 124, 125, 223 Kabires 95, 124 Karr, Alphonse 40, 228 Kars el-Aini hospital 19-20, 40, 208, 209, 210, 222
Lamartine, Alphonse Marie Louis de 192 Lannes, Jean, Due de Montebello 227, 228, 274-5, 277 Lares 161, 162, 185, 216, 261-2, 277 lavatio 36, 45, 125, 209, 223 and MB 48, 52, 55, 58, 63, 77, 78 Le Poittevin, Alfred death 15, 46, 47, 59, 78 letter to 14, 202 marriage 4, 59, 148, 225, 227, 231 son's birth 36, 228 Le Poittevin, Louis 36, 228 Le Poittevin, Paul-Alfred 225, 268 Legion d'Honneur 49, 79-80, 82-3, 85, 139, 176, 193, 239, 242 creation 275 date of institution no, 196, 227, 266 de Monville's fictional 76, 245, 268 Lent 51 Leo (zodiacal sign) 91, 103 Leu, St 278 Leviathan 117, 118 Liberalia 36
Index Lightfoot, John 83 lions 91, 103, 104, no, 122, 123, 128
Little Red Riding Hood 64, 80, 84-5, 86, 128 Livy 88-9, 105 loans 6, 70-1 Lohengrin 218 loops, time 23-5 looting, sacrilegious 122-3 Louis XVI, King 249 accession 53, 85 death 50, 74, 75, 87, 243, 250, 272 trial 4, 50, 75, 87 Louis XVII, King 249-50 Louis XVIII, King 105, 126,194 Louis Napoleon see Napoleon III Louis-Philippe, King 82, 132, 150, 164, 249 Lourdes, pilgrimage to 210, 211 Louvel, Louis Pierre 133 Lucy, St 51, 52 lunisolar cycle, nineteen-year 3 Lupercalia 60, 79, 98, 99, 115, 118, 181, 216 lustratio 58 Luxembourg Gardens, Paris 265-6 Lydwine, St 166, 275 Lyon 55, 166, 275 Magi, Festival of the 61 Mago (Carthaginian agricultural writer) 9<>> 255 Malet, Claude Francois de 83 Marbeuf, Louis 158, 272 Marie-Antoinette, Queen 197 Marie-Louise, Empress birth 171 death 148, 171 marriage to Napoleon 52, 74, 121, 125, 212, 223, 252 Marmont, Auguste Frederic Louis Viesse de 196 Mars 80 marshalate n o - n , 180, 196 abolition (1793) 274, 277 Napoleonic revival no, 227, 236, 244, 266, 277 women in 277, 280 Mary the wife of Cleophas 153 Mary, Virgin 135, 141, 183 see also Annunciation; Assumption Massena, Andre 99, 227, 274
389
Mater Dolorosa 183 Maupassant, Guy de 260 Maupassant, Louise de 225 May as ill-omened time for weddings 231 medicine 82, 163, 164, 247 see also arsenic; venereal disease Megalensia 96, 124, 223 Melaine, Sts 260-1 Melie 253-60 Melkarth 133 menses, measurement of time by 3 Mercedonius (intercalary month) 143 Mercury, festival of 167
Michaud, Joseph Francois, Biographie universelle 21, 194 Minerva 80, 156, 164 Medica 222 mirrors 30, 35, 82-3, 208, 225, 227 Mithras 161 Mohammed (Egyptian rais) 19, 78, 208, 209, 222, 246, 247 Mohammed (Prophet) 176, 208 Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) 43, 53, 73,85 months, names of 6 mood, use of time to establish 1 moonstones 119 Morny, Charles Auguste Louis Joseph, Due de 156, 175, 212, 234-5, 236, 250-1 birth 177, 260 death 173 and suffrage law 154, 173 Mosaic calendar 89 mourning, period of widow's 167 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 181 mundus, opening of 46, 81 Murat, Joachim 79, 104, 106, 107, 108, 126, 275 Musset, Alfred de 132, 178, 206, 225, 226, 228-9 names of characters 35, 67, 184-6 and Flaubert family members 28, 57 history/folklore intersection 50 Nantes, revocation of Edict of 181 Naples 99, 103, 108 Napoleon I, Emperor 7-8 abandons army: in Egypt 36, 62, 163, 169; on retreat from Moscow 4, 15, 50, 75-6, 84, 87, 169, 180, 243-4 abdications 79, 80, 159, 170, 199
390
Index
Napoleon I, Emperor (cont.) and anniversaries 83 birthdate 15, 62, 76, 136, 144 colours connected with 239-46, 249 complexion 50, 74, 78, 79, 162, 163, 168, 211, 245-6 coronation date 271 death 15, 59-60, 62, 169, 173, 202 on Elba: arrival 92, 100, 173; escape 87, 155, 198 and Eleonore Denuelle 147, 152 expulsion to Rochefort 102, 178 and Flaubert family mythology 75-6, 123, 161-2 in Flaubert's novels: BeP 250-1; ESn 147, 182; MB 49-50, 62-3, 64, 75-6, 79-80, 87; Salammbo 105, 107, 113-14, 121-2, 128 green coach 14 home in Rue de la Huchette 64 and Hortense 75, 270 Hugo on 234 Hundred Days 4, 67 and incest 270 and Josephine, see underJosephine, Empress and lions 104, 123, 128 and Louis Napoleon 10, 74, 75, 131, 136, 148 and Marie-Louise 52, 74, 121, 125, 212, 223, 252 name, significance of 103-4 names of women connected with 168-9 return of remains to France 150, 159 ripe pear motif 156, 163 in Rome 99 sexual initiation 137, 138, 182 signature BP 191 and Talleyrand 118, 126 tomb 76, 150 Napoleon II, Emperor 59, 195, 199 Napoleon III, Emperor (Louis Napoleon) 249-53 baptism 273 birth 104, 196 complexion 212 conception and gestation 10, 50, 74, 75, 87, 136, 138, 145, 167, 168-9, 179, 272, 273, 279 death 250 duel 228, 274 Hugo on 207, 234
illegitimate children 147, 148, 198 marriage 213, 252 political career 131, 135, 194, 196, 199, 210; abortive coups 136, 144, 147; imprisonment in Ham 159, 198, 273; return to France 199; in Assembly 82, 173; as President 172, 191, 192, 236, 271; coup d'etat (1851) 53, 85-6, J54> ^ 5 - 6 , i73> J79> l8o> l88 > 235> 272 Napoleon, Prince (Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte) 212, 213, 252 Napoleon, St 91, 103 Narr'Havas (fictional character) 105-9 National Guard 165 Neapolus, St 248 nefaste 7, 9, 58, 91 Neipperg, Adam Albert, Count von 108 Nemours, Louis Charles Philippe d'Orleans, Due de 33 Nerval, Gerard de 84 New Year period 29-30,31,65,72,135,200 danger 65, 221-2 formerly April 1st 205 Greek 185 Gregorian 160 Roman 185 Russian 278 Ney, Michel 106, in, 126, 175, 180 Niemen River 94, 106 *9bre' ambiguity 6, 71 nineteen year cycle, lunisolar 3 Numa Pompilius 185 nurses 124, 253 oats 254-5, 257-8 October Horse 179, 181 Odysseus 105 Oedipus theme 263-9 Olympe 235 Olympiads 3, 184, 200 Ophiuchus (constellation) 95 Orphic Mysteries 255 Oudinot, Nicolas Charles Victor, Duke of Reggio 210 Ovens, Roman Festival of 74 Ovid: Fasti 5, 36, 46, 60, 90, 95 on May weddings 231 on Regifugium 150
on swallow 57 on Venus 222
Index Palm Sunday 20, 77, 78, 206 parasol, broken 136, 184, 237 Parentalia 80, 161, 277 Passion of Christ 164, 196 Passover 94, 96 Paul, St 171 peachtrees, fish-bone pattern 90, 93, 203-4 pear, ripe 62-3, 156, 163 pederasty 19, 20 pelisse, Emilie's 42-3, 47, 223-4 Peninsular War 104, 122, 142-3, 156, 196 Pentecost 231 Pepin 50, 64, 214 Perchta/Berthe 51, 52, 58, 60 Perrault, Charles, Petit Chaperon Rouge 84-5, 86 Persephone 46, 64, 74-5, 79, 80, 84, 261 Persian religion 46 Persigny, Jean Gilbert Victor Fialin, Due dei3i Peter, St 34, 161, 172, 185, 202-3, 2II> 2 5°
Racine, Jean 43 Raspail, Francois 163, 246 Rateau Proposition 173 Recamier, Jeanne Francoise Julie Adelaide 27 redundant dates 15 Regifugium, Flight of the King 140-1, 150, 164 Remusat, Charles Francois Marie, Comte de 87 Republic, proclamation of 92, 100, 173 Restif de la Bretonne, Nicolas Edme 83 resurrection 77, 91 Revoil, Antoine 131 Revolution (1789), calendar of 89, 141, 200 Revolution (1848) 100, 150, 165 Rhea/Cybele 64, 77, 96, 124, 223 rhinoceros 117, 121
Petit Chaperon rouge, Le see Little Red
Robigalia 88, 107 Rochefort, Victor Henri, Marquis de 212, 252 Roman calendar 60, 65, 109, 185, 227 Romanticism 33, 37, 43, 140, 143 Rome age of retirement from army 191-2 augury 168 consular year i n , 192 Gallic invasion 88-9 GF's admiration for Empire 244 Imperial and Republican symbols 185 Napoleon's troops enter 99 official year of tribuni plebis 116 solstice 142 Vatican Hill 161
Riding Hood Peur, Grande 196 phalange 124, I I O - I I , 124, 180, 225, 227,
231 Phalaris, tyrant of Acragas 103 pharmakoi (scapegoats) 91 Phoenicians; name 245 Pius IX, Pope 210 Pius VII, Pope 183 Pliny the Younger 19, 93, 94 Plutarch 2 Polybius 88-9, 94, 96, 120 Polycarpe, St 128 Ponsard, Francois 140 Pont l'Eveque, crise de 9, 30, 72 Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre 139, 140 postage stamps 191 Presentation 79 present-tense perspective 22 press, freedom of 82 Pressburg, Treaty of 126 prostitution 88, 138, 164, 246 Prussia 136 Punic calendar 88, 89-90, 100, 102, 114 Purification 60, 99 quincunx 15, 157, 227 quinine 163-4, 247 Quinquatria 80
Rigsmaal 50
Robespierre, Maximilien Marie Isidore
see also individual gods and festivals and
Julian calendar; Roman calendar Rome, King of 168, 194, 195, 274 Romulus 59, 77, 185 Romulus, St 77 Rosary, day of 159 Rose/Hortense 170, 269-81 roselet, see weasel
Roseline, St 177 Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio 133-4 Rotkdppchen 84-5, 86 Rouault, Emma 256, 267 Rouen 33, 189-90 massacres 91, 93, 100, 101, 175, 202
392
Index
Russia 165, 278 Sacred Legion of Thebes 125 Saint-Cloud 136, 138, 139, 140, 145, 272, 273 Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin 3, 95, 97, 171 Samhain 53-4, 56, 67, 70, 92 Sand, George 135, 136, 250, 261 Sartre, Jean-Paul 11, 76, 232 Saturn 80, 96, 124, 125, 223, 251 Saturnalia 149, 169 Schlesinger, Adolphe-Maurice 20, 29, 216-25 birth 18, 27, 30, 40, 68, 72, 134-5, 205 conception 10, 18, 43, 99, 132, 202, 205, 208-9, 219, 224, 239, 252, 256 Schlesinger, Elisa birthday 17, 220 Le Chateau des coeurs and 230
GF's meeting at Trouville 16, 218, 220 GF's relationship with 134, 217-18 honeymoon 41 in ESi 27-30, 35 in ES11 137 marriages; Judee 17-18, 35, 137, 141-2; Schlesinger 63, 144, 182-3, ^ 4 , 186 pregnancy 27 and rosary 177 Schlesinger, Marie-Adele 16, 18, 29, 32, 175, 221, 236 Schlesinger, Maurice-Adolphe 18 anniversary of GF's first meeting at Trouville 220 birth 16, 68 GF's relationship with 134, 217-18 honeymoon 41 in ESi 28, 29 marriage 63, 144, 182-3, ^ 4 , *86 and MB 54 and Rossini's Stabat Mater 133 Schlesinger family 73, 216-25 Scott, Sir Walter 76 seasons 56, 65 Senard 100, 101, 102, 157, 175, 221 September/December correlation 69-70, 72 Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, festival of •83 Shakespeare, William 38, 139 Silenus 36 six-month coincidence 5
ESi 34, 35, 42 ES11 141 MB 63-4, 65, 79 Salammbo 94, 96
Skirophoria 184, 215 solar cycle 89, 96-7, 184, 200 solstices 73, 77-8, 140, 142, 185, 193 Julian calendar 92 in Salammbo 92, 94, 95, 98, 109 wakes 77-8, 92 Sophocles 263-9 Soult, Nicolas Jean de Dieu 34 Spain 104, 107-8, 122, 123, 142-3, 156, 196 stars 95, 165 Stendhal (Henri Beyle) 206 suffrage 138, 154, 173, 176, 179, 199 sunrise-to-sunrise count 7 suppressions/repressions of time 8-9, 15 Supreme Being 79 swallow 57-8 swan maiden 51 swans 36, 42, 168, 218, 262, 268 Swiss Guard, massacre of 74, 87, 272 Sylvestre, St 30, 69, 72, 73, 221, 261 Synaxis of the Mother of God 135 syphilis 39-40, 78, 153-4 in BeP 153-4, J 88, 206, 209, 215, 276 cures for 78 Flaubert and 19-20, 40, 142, 209 and jaundice 207-8 Jules de Goncourt and 190 Lydwine as saint of 166, 275 and rose 276 see also venereal disease Tabernacles 94 Tadolini, Giovanni 133 Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles Maurice de 143, 197, 250-1, 279-80 marriage 114, 120 and Salammbo 105, 106, no, 115, 116—21, 126,127 Tanit 124, 240 ten-day runs 4-5, 91, 157, 169, 201-2 Tennis Court Oath 195 Terminalia 164, 197 terminology, collective chronological 6-7 Thargelia 91 Thebes, Greece 125, 157, 265 Therese, St 179 Thermopylae, battle of 184
Index Thesmophoria 54, 63, 64, 94 thirteen 7 see also Balzac, Honore de (Treize) Thomas, St 227-8 Tilsit, Treaty of 108, 122 Tolentino, battle of 108 Toulouse 279 Toxcatlgi, 93 Trinity, feast of 177 Trouville 16, 218, 235 Troy 105, 162-3 Tuesdays as 'nefaste' 9 Tuileries, Invasion of 195 Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich 137 12/13 coincidence 13-15, 25, 26, 34 twyborn individuals see birth (double) Ursula, St 51-2 Ussher, James 83 Ussher, Thomas 83 Utica, battle of no, 116, 117 Valentine's Day 33 Valkyries 280-1 Varennes, Flight to 195, 197 Varro 90, 255 Vatican Index 195 venereal disease 39-40, 176—7, 216 in ifeP 153-4, :76> 188, 193, 206, 207-10, 211, 223, 254, 256, 276 see also syphilis
393
Venus 153, 222-3 Erycina 88, 107, 138, 161 Vergeot, Alexandrine-Eleonore 147, 198 Vervins, treaty of 107 Vesta and Vestalia 261 Victoria, Queen of Great Britain 195 Vigny, Alfred de 225, 229, 282 Vinalia 138, 161 violets 160, 181 Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) 88 Voragine, Jacobus de 154, 246, 261 wakes 92-3, 77-8 Walburga, St 197, 198 Walewska, Marie 192 Walewski, Alexandre Florian Joseph Colonna, Count 173 Walpurgisnacht 56, 91, 197, 202
Waterloo, battle of 4 weasel 22, 25-6, 32, 39, 262 week as 'huit jours' 6, 24, 208 White Lady 51-2 wolves 64, 80, 85, 86, 185, 216 Worlee, Catherine Noel, Mme Grand (later Talleyrand) 114, 120 writing, attitude towards 2, 5, 10 Yonville-l'Abbaye 267 zodiac 92, 103
Cambridge Studies in French
General editor: Malcolm Bowie [All Souls College, Oxford) Editorial Board: R. Howard Bloch [University of California, Berkeley), Terence Cave [St John's College, Oxford), Ross Chambers [University of Michigan), Antoine Compagnon [Columbia University), Peter France [University of Edinburgh), Christie McDonald [Harvard University), Toril Moi [Duke University), Naomi Schor [Harvard University)
Also in the series (*denotes titles now out of print) *i. J. M. Cocking: Proust: Collected Essays on the Writer and his Art 2. Leo Bersani: The Death of Stephanie Mallarme *3. Marian Hobson: The Object of Art: The Theory of Illusion in Eighteenth-Century France
*4. Leo Spitzer, translated and edited by David Bellos: Essays on Seventeenth-Century French Literature 5. Norman Bryson: Tradition and Desire: From David to Delacroix *6. Ann Moss: Poetry and Fable: Studies in Mythological Narrative in Sixteenth-Century France 7.
Rhiannon Goldthorpe: Sartre: Literature and Theory
8. Diana Knight: Flaubert's Characters: The Language of Illusion *g.
Andrew Martin: The Knowledge of Ignorance: From Genesis to Jules Verne
10.
Geoffrey Bennington: Sententiousness and the Novel: Laying Down the Law in Eighteenth-Century French Fiction
*n.
Penny Florence: Mallarme, Manet and Redon: Visual and Aural Signs and the Generation ofMeaning
12. Christopher Prendergast: The Order of Mimesis: Balzac, Stendhal, Nerval, and Flaubert *i3. Naomi Segal: The Unintended Reader: Feminism andManon Lescaut 14. Clive Scott: A Question of Syllables: Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Verse *i5« Stirling Haig: Flaubert and the Gift of Speech: Dialogue and Discourse in Four 'Modern3Novels *i6. Nathaniel Wing: The Limits of Narrative: Essays on Baudelaire, Flaubert, Rimbaud and Mallarme *iy.
Mitchell Greenberg: Corneille, Classicism and the Ruses of Symmetry
*i8. Howard Davies: Sartre and 'Les Temps Modernes3 *ig. Robert Greer Cohn: Mallarme's Prose Poems: A Critical Study *2O. Celia Britton: Claude Simon: Writing the Visible 21. David Scott: Pictorialist Poetics: Poetry and the Visual Arts in NineteenthCentury France *22. Ann Jefferson: Reading Realism in Stendhal *23« Dalia Judovitz: Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes: The Origins ofModernity *24- Richard D. E. Burton: Baudelaire in i8$g 25. Michael Moriarty: Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France 26. J o h n Forrester: The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida 27. Jerome Schwartz: Irony and Ideology in Rabelais: Structures of Subversion 28. David Baguley: Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision 29. Leslie Hill: Beckett's Fiction: In Different Words 30. F. W. Leakey: Baudelaire: Collected Essays, igjj-ig88 31. Sarah Kay: Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry 32. Gillian Jondorf: French Renaissance Tragedy: The Dramatic Word 33. Lawrence D. Kritzman: The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance 34. Jerry C. Nash: The Love Aesthetics of Maurice Sceve: Poetry and Struggle
35-
Peter France: Politeness and its Discontents: Problems in French Classical Culture
36. Mitchell Greenberg: Subjectivity and Subjugation in SeventeenthCentury Drama and Prose: The Family Romance of French Classicism 37.
Tom Conley: The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French Writing
38.
Margery Evans: Baudelaire and Intertextuality: Poetry at the Crossroads
39. Judith Still: Justice and Difference in the Works of Rousseau: bienfaisance and Pudeur 40.
Christopher Johnson: System and Writing in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida
41.
Carol A. Mossman: Politics and Narratives of Birth: Gynocolonization from Rousseau to %pla
42.
Daniel Brewer: The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing
43.
Roberta L. Krueger: Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance
44. James H . Reid: Narration and Description in the French Realist Novel: The Temporality of Lying and Forgetting 45.
Eugene W. Holland: Baudelaire and Schizoanalysis: The Socio-poetics ofModernism
46. Hugh M. Davidson: Pascal and the Arts of the Mind 47.
David J. Denby: Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1760-1820: A Politics of Tears
48.
Claire Addison: Where Flaubert Lies: Chronology, Mythology and History
49. John Claiborne Isbell: The Birth of European Romanticism: Sta'eVs De l'Allemagne 50.
Michael Sprinker: History and Ideology in Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu and the Third French Republic
51.
Dee Reynolds: Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art: Sites of Imaginary Space
52.
David B. Allison, Marks S. Roberts & Allen S. Weiss: Sade and the Narrative of Transgression
53.
Simon Gaunt: Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature
54.
Jeffrey Mehlman: Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France